Learner response: OSP assessment
1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).
WWW- Some excellent answers and very close to an A. Good attempt to bring in wider products in Q2 (Men's Health) and your grasp of theory and the CSPs is generally very strong.
EBI- You may have confused Hesmondhalgh and Gauntlett...check this.
Make sure you are sharply focused on the question throughout. E.g. Q2 is about a narrow range of values and ideologies in the media.
Planning is another aspect to reflect on. Improving this could give you more clarity and a stronger, more sophisticated argument.
2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 1 (Shirky, audiences and producers).
Teen Vogue-
3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (values and ideologies).
Teen Vogue-
4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resource you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 1. Make sure you are planning at least five well-developed paragraphs in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.
WWW- Some excellent answers and very close to an A. Good attempt to bring in wider products in Q2 (Men's Health) and your grasp of theory and the CSPs is generally very strong.
EBI- You may have confused Hesmondhalgh and Gauntlett...check this.
Make sure you are sharply focused on the question throughout. E.g. Q2 is about a narrow range of values and ideologies in the media.
Planning is another aspect to reflect on. Improving this could give you more clarity and a stronger, more sophisticated argument.
2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 1 (Shirky, audiences and producers).
Teen Vogue-
- Without cover-price and print advertising revenue, Teen Vogue now needs clicks. Although the brand has received significant credit for its political reporting, the website and social media channels are still dominated by ‘clickbait’ headlines, often constructed in an unusual first-person style (‘Cats Can Get Acne Too and Now I Feel Less Alone.’)
- Teen Vogue is clearly constructed for mobile and tablet consumption – simple clean layout, style of headline, use of advertising and commercial tie-ins (sponsored content or ‘Partner Content’) etc.
- Teen Vogue’s shift to a more explicitly liberal promotion of feminist and identity politics reflects the movement feminist bloggers began in the mid-2000s. This is a great example of the influence some of the “billion new participants” Shirky talks of can influence the news agenda or change the direction of major, established media brands. Teen Vogue’s online presence still contains fashion and beauty but is a far cry from the vacuous teenage content that the first print edition contained in 2003.
The Voice-
- The refusal to publish website or circulation statistics suggests a brand that has failed to adapt to the “contemporary media ecosystem” Shirky describes.
- The Voice should be successful – the opportunities that are offered by digital media and the new media landscape in targeting niche audiences could provide an ideal platform for a strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it set out to be when launched in 1982. Shirky discusses the “mass amatuerisation” of the media but successful products still need to at least imitate professional production values and The Voice fails to do this.
3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (values and ideologies).
Teen Vogue-
- The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s (sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018 article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’.
- Teen Vogue has encouraged activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018). These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.
- Alternatively, it could be argued that Teen Vogue is replicating many of the mainstream, hegemonic values and ideologies found across the cultural industries with regards to the representation of women and the fashion industry. Despite appearing to champion progressive causes, Teen Vogue in fact reinforces the expectations placed on women with regards to beauty and appearance. This is regressive and promotes a capitalist ideal that encourages people – particularly women – to spend money to solve ‘problems’ with their life and appearance. These fashion and beauty stories often use narrative to create the idea of ‘resolving’ problems and creating a new equilibrium. A similar approach can be found in Men’s Health magazine – which while appearing to promote progressive causes (such as mental health - #SlayWinterBlues), in fact reinforces the idea that men should spend money on changing their appearance. The fact Men’s Health have diversified into branded gym equipment demonstrates this.
The Voice-
- The Voice offers an explicit black British perspective on news stories and issues in London and the UK. This alone sets it apart from mainstream media and suggests that Hesmondhalgh’s view that only a narrow range of values and ideologies are available is not entirely accurate. Features such as the first black photographer to shoot the cover picture of Vogue magazine (December 2018) and a suggestion to ‘Buy black on Black Friday’ (November 2018) both reflect this agenda.
- However, The Voice has been doing this to some extent since its launch in 1982 and it has arguably become less powerful and influential in recent years. This suggests the digital revolution Clay Shirky writes about (the “billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem”) has not benefited The Voice in its mission to promote values and ideologies that remain outside the mainstream.
- Paul Gilroy has written extensively on the experience of black British people and his work on ‘double consciousness’ is worth exploring in relation to this question. The Voice arguably plays an important role in offering a more diverse range of values and ideologies in offering black British audiences representations that more closely reflect their experience of life in Britain. Gilroy would arguably agree with Hesmondhalgh’s view that the cultural industries promote a narrow set of values and ideologies – ideologies that are dominated by white voices and a white perspective. If The Voice offers black audiences the opportunity to see representations that are not created by media producers that are overwhelmingly white (and middle class) then it is arguably offering an important service to British culture despite its low production values or YouTube view count. Links can be drawn here with music videos such as Common’s Letter to the Free, another product seeking to create an audience experience that transcends the ‘double consciousness’ that black consumers so often face when interacting with the cultural industries.
Synoptic links-
- Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.
- The magazine Oh Comely offers a case study in values and ideologies that sit outside the mainstream. The niche product, focusing on articles on gender fluidity and strong female voices, with a quirky, artistic design, suggests that in contrast to Shirky’s view that the internet will provide “a billion new participants” to diversify values and ideologies in the modern media landscape, perhaps niche print publications will provide this instead. However, class may be a factor here too; Hesmondhalgh has written of the marginalising of working class voices and products such as Oh Comely (and even Teen Vogue) are clearly representing wealthy, middle-class interests. In contrast, The Voice has quite an authentic working class feel to it – but appears to be struggling to find an audience in the “contemporary media ecosystem”. This perhaps reinforces Hesmondhalgh’s view regarding a narrow range of values and ideologies.
- MailOnline – the website of a newspaper famous for its right-wing, conservative ideologies but a site that shamelessly uses clickbait articles that would seem to contradict the values of the print newspaper. The right-hand ‘sidebar of shame’ featuring celebrity gossip and salacious paparazzi photography is clearly designed to maximise traffic in exactly the way Teen Vogue does with celebrity stories and beauty tips. Perhaps the narrow range of values and ideologies in the cultural industries is less a product of political hegemony but instead the constant demand for profit.
4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resource you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 1. Make sure you are planning at least five well-developed paragraphs in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.
01 When discussing his ‘End of Audience’ theories, Clay Shirky has stated that “organisations now have to understand, and respect, the motivations of the billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem.”
How far do the construction and consumption of your online, social and participatory Close Study Products (The Voice and Teen Vogue) reflect this change in relationship between audiences and producers?
[25 marks]
Introduction-
Clay Shirky's 'End of Audience' theory discusses the fact that audiences are no longer passive vessels that just absorb information given to them (like the Hypodermic Needle Theory would suggest), they are much more proactive now and the line between audiences and producers has started to blur. Due to this change, many media products have had to adapt to meet the new demands of their audiences, some have succeeeded while others contine to struggle.
Clay Shirky's 'End of Audience' theory discusses the fact that audiences are no longer passive vessels that just absorb information given to them (like the Hypodermic Needle Theory would suggest), they are much more proactive now and the line between audiences and producers has started to blur. Due to this change, many media products have had to adapt to meet the new demands of their audiences, some have succeeeded while others contine to struggle.
Teen Vogue-
- Teen Vogue reflects the challenges major media producers such as Conde Nast have faced: declining print revenues, changing audience habits, the need to diversify and create new revenue streams. Teen Vogue has entirely reinvented itself in the last four years – initially cutting down the print edition to four per year then cutting it entirely. Meanwhile, the website was moved in a more political direction with the ‘News and Politics’ tab becoming the first option on the top menu bar and op-ed pieces such as ‘Donald Trump is Gaslighting America’ becoming viral sensations.
- The construction of the Teen Vogue website and social media also reflects the power shift from producers to audiences. Without cover-price and print advertising revenue, Teen Vogue now needs clicks. Although the brand has received significant credit for its political reporting, the website and social media channels are still dominated by ‘clickbait’ headlines, often constructed in an unusual first-person style (‘Cats Can Get Acne Too and Now I Feel Less Alone.’)
- Teen Vogue’s success in recent years (unique website users shot up from 2m a month to 10m+ a month thanks to digital director Phillip Picardi) is down to reinvention of the brand to take into account the changes in the media landscape that Shirky’s ‘End of Audience’ theories suggests.
The Voice-
- The Voice is a very typical newspaper website. In terms of conventions, it is dated – it has the feel of a 2010 news website (for example, the old BBC website). In many ways, it doesn’t reflect the changing landscape in the way one might expect – and this perhaps explains its relative lack of success in recent years. At a time digital media has been used powerfully to spotlight minority issues (such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA), The Voice in the UK seems to have been largely silenced. The refusal to publish website or circulation statistics suggests a brand that has failed to adapt to the “contemporary media ecosystem” Shirky describes.
- Analysis of the social media content reinforces this. The Voice’s YouTube channel offers videos with startlingly low production values such as ‘Meet Six Influential Black Women’. This should be attractive content with the potential to go viral but it is poorly constructed with low-quality audio, an irrelevant and distracting whiteboard in the background and a YouTube view count of just 150. Indeed, while audience data for The Voice’s website and print version are not available, the low number of YouTube views suggests a brand struggling to survive in the 21st century media landscape.
- The Voice should be successful – the opportunities that are offered by digital media and the new media landscape in targeting niche audiences could provide an ideal platform for a strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it set out to be when launched in 1982. Shirky discusses the “mass amatuerisation” of the media but successful products still need to at least imitate professional production values and The Voice fails to do this.
Conclusion-
Organisations do "have to understand, and respect, the motivations of the billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem.” in order to be successful in this new world.
5) Finally, do the same for Question 2. Remember, Question 2 is a synoptic question so your answer must refer to aspects from the whole A Level Media course. Therefore, make sure you are bringing in CSPs, theories or debates from across the whole course of study.Organisations do "have to understand, and respect, the motivations of the billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem.” in order to be successful in this new world.
02 In The Cultural Industries, David Hesmondhalgh argues that despite their size, the cultural industries are dominated by a narrow range of values and ideologies.
To what extent does an analysis of your online, social and participatory Close Study Products (The Voice and Teen Vogue) support this view?
[25 marks]
Introduction- Some media products go against David Hesmondhalg's view and some support it.
Those that support his view-
1)Teen Vogue- it could be argued that Teen Vogue is replicating many of the mainstream, hegemonic values and ideologies found across the cultural industries with regards to the representation of women and the fashion industry. Despite appearing to champion progressive causes, Teen Vogue in fact reinforces the expectations placed on women with regards to beauty and appearance. This is regressive and promotes a capitalist ideal that encourages people – particularly women – to spend money to solve ‘problems’ with their life and appearance. These fashion and beauty stories often use narrative to create the idea of ‘resolving’ problems and creating a new equilibrium.
2) Men's Health- A similar approach can be found in Men’s Health magazine – which while appearing to promote progressive causes (such as mental health - #SlayWinterBlues), in fact reinforces the idea that men should spend money on changing their appearance. The fact Men’s Health have diversified into branded gym equipment demonstrates this.
3) The Voice- Gilroy would arguably agree with Hesmondhalgh’s view that the cultural industries promote a narrow set of values and ideologies – ideologies that are dominated by white voices and a white perspective. If The Voice offers black audiences the opportunity to see representations that are not created by media producers that are overwhelmingly white (and middle class) then it is arguably offering an important service to British culture despite its low production values or YouTube view count. Links can be drawn here with music videos such as Common’s Letter to the Free, another product seeking to create an audience experience that transcends the ‘double consciousness’ that black consumers so often face when interacting with the cultural industries.
4) Oh Comely- Class may be a factor here too; Hesmondhalgh has written of the marginalising of working class voices and products such as Oh Comely (and even Teen Vogue) are clearly representing wealthy, middle-class interests. In contrast, The Voice has quite an authentic working class feel to it – but appears to be struggling to find an audience in the “contemporary media ecosystem”. This perhaps reinforces Hesmondhalgh’s view regarding a narrow range of values and ideologies.
Those that go against his view-
1)Teen Vogue- The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s (sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018 article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’. Teen Vogue has encouraged activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018). These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.
2)The Voice- The Voice offers an explicit black British perspective on news stories and issues in London and the UK. This alone sets it apart from mainstream media and suggests that Hesmondhalgh’s view that only a narrow range of values and ideologies are available is not entirely accurate. Features such as the first black photographer to shoot the cover picture of Vogue magazine (December 2018) and a suggestion to ‘Buy black on Black Friday’ (November 2018) both reflect this agenda.
3)Maybelline- Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.
Conclusion- It is quite clear from the examples above that the cultural industries are trying to break away from the narrow range of values and ideologies that they are dominated by. However, even when they try to do this, they still have some form of the narrow range of values and ideologies being expressed (like with Teen Vogue and The Voice) It is arguable whether they will only diverse away from these narrow range of values and ideologies for pure profit-driven reasons.
Those that support his view-
1)Teen Vogue- it could be argued that Teen Vogue is replicating many of the mainstream, hegemonic values and ideologies found across the cultural industries with regards to the representation of women and the fashion industry. Despite appearing to champion progressive causes, Teen Vogue in fact reinforces the expectations placed on women with regards to beauty and appearance. This is regressive and promotes a capitalist ideal that encourages people – particularly women – to spend money to solve ‘problems’ with their life and appearance. These fashion and beauty stories often use narrative to create the idea of ‘resolving’ problems and creating a new equilibrium.
2) Men's Health- A similar approach can be found in Men’s Health magazine – which while appearing to promote progressive causes (such as mental health - #SlayWinterBlues), in fact reinforces the idea that men should spend money on changing their appearance. The fact Men’s Health have diversified into branded gym equipment demonstrates this.
3) The Voice- Gilroy would arguably agree with Hesmondhalgh’s view that the cultural industries promote a narrow set of values and ideologies – ideologies that are dominated by white voices and a white perspective. If The Voice offers black audiences the opportunity to see representations that are not created by media producers that are overwhelmingly white (and middle class) then it is arguably offering an important service to British culture despite its low production values or YouTube view count. Links can be drawn here with music videos such as Common’s Letter to the Free, another product seeking to create an audience experience that transcends the ‘double consciousness’ that black consumers so often face when interacting with the cultural industries.
4) Oh Comely- Class may be a factor here too; Hesmondhalgh has written of the marginalising of working class voices and products such as Oh Comely (and even Teen Vogue) are clearly representing wealthy, middle-class interests. In contrast, The Voice has quite an authentic working class feel to it – but appears to be struggling to find an audience in the “contemporary media ecosystem”. This perhaps reinforces Hesmondhalgh’s view regarding a narrow range of values and ideologies.
Those that go against his view-
1)Teen Vogue- The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s (sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018 article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’. Teen Vogue has encouraged activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018). These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.
2)The Voice- The Voice offers an explicit black British perspective on news stories and issues in London and the UK. This alone sets it apart from mainstream media and suggests that Hesmondhalgh’s view that only a narrow range of values and ideologies are available is not entirely accurate. Features such as the first black photographer to shoot the cover picture of Vogue magazine (December 2018) and a suggestion to ‘Buy black on Black Friday’ (November 2018) both reflect this agenda.
3)Maybelline- Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.
Conclusion- It is quite clear from the examples above that the cultural industries are trying to break away from the narrow range of values and ideologies that they are dominated by. However, even when they try to do this, they still have some form of the narrow range of values and ideologies being expressed (like with Teen Vogue and The Voice) It is arguable whether they will only diverse away from these narrow range of values and ideologies for pure profit-driven reasons.
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