Attitude Online

Initial analysis: 

Targets gay British men
Attitude is owned and published by Stream - horizontally integrated 

• covering the period July –Dec 2014. Attitude digital has 12,701 readers which is a year on year growth of 27.4% 

• Main imagine is stereotypical of a homosexual man, with the posed face and the bow tie and also the mise-en-scene of the umbrella- he's stereotypical attractive for a homosexual audience- he's staring out of the photograph
• The basic colour scheme of white background and small coloured accents connotes to the LGBT flag
• Anchorage of the title juxtaposes the stereotypical confidence of a homosexual man, and also makes him more feminine
• San serif font is very simple and bold, and makes it easy to read and understand  
• Use of green folio (category) helps reader understand which section of the site they're on 
• The target gay British audience would know about the West-end and the audience being predominately gay
• The hash tag '#queerAF podcast' - intertextuality- assumes that the audience is interested in that side of the article
• Targeted to a younger audience through the use of a hashtag and also that they call it a 'student' podcast
• Labelling themselves 'queer' is a example of re-appropriation 
• Mise-en-scene connotes old school musicals such as singing in the rain 
• 
  

• Article with male models is provocative poses is voyeuristic
• The promotion of holidays, cruises and gyms all use disposable income which stereotypically homosexual men have as they don't have children to pay for 
• Gay icon of Freddie Mercury and also speaking of the film 'Bohemian Rhapsody' related to the way that they want to attract their readers and empower them 
• promotion of sperm-enhancing drugs is very specific to the target, with the colour pink on the packaging connoting to femininity 
• Very stereotypically gay with the articles and mise-en-scene which makes gay people feel inclusive and they're part of a community

bell hooks theory is vital here- 'feminism is for everybody'



How are Gay men represented in Attitude online?

• Hyper-sexualised images of men are frequently used within the magazine- big focus on openness and 'out-there' sexualisation- the magazine and website have a definite target audience and may go 'hidden' in general society
• Multiple articles that suggest that homosexuals are vulnerable, they also aim to give gay people more confidence refers to 'coming out'
• Conforms to the stereotypes that homosexuals are vain, there are many articles about looks- a focus on aesthetics 
• Promiscuity is very prominent within the style and lifestyle arguments
• Represented as feminine as they're described as 'beautiful' 
• Article on gay rugby team focusses on the team's body image as opposed to their sporting progress, again reinforcing an emphasis on aesthetics
• Represented as extravagant and with an exotic lifestyle 
• Proud and self confident- gives the audience confidence to come out and to live with pride
• Singular and stereotypical representation of men - like in woman's magazine with females
• This is a very specific representation of masculinity - singular and stereotypical representation - cultivates the idea that this is what gay men should look like - its not diverse 
• This may be a reaction to the stereotype that gay men are feminine  

The purpose of attitude online is to promote the magazine

one of the advantages of the websites is more people can access it if they're in the closet 

• What representations of masculinity are constructed in this front cover? Make explicit reference to the toolkit for textual analysis.

• To what extent does this cover subvert hegemonic representations of masculinity?

• How is anchorage provided by the cover lines of the magazine cover?

• How does the print version of Attitude demonstrate digital convergence?

• The use of hot pink connotes a stereotypically female colour
• Colour scheme looks like ann summers
• Mise-en-scene of the army outfit is stereotypically very masculine and straight men however the outfit being unzipped is very stereotypically gay 
• wide, bright eyes with eye liner and eye make up is much more stereotypical of a female cover model 
• The use of red nail polish is typically sexy and alluring 
• Its part of the attitude brand - they have a synergistic relationship
• challenges ideas of masculinity- through the use of heavy make up , there is a binary opposition between the make up and the jacket 
• his pose is camp
• He's staring at the audience 
•  The magazine and website have a synergistic relationship
• subversive of stereotypes 
• The sell line hints at something you will get inside the magazine 

Stuart Hall- stereotypes and inequality in attitude:

He suggests that 'the media representations play an important role in defining the ideological thinking of audiences regarding specific social groups'
- we get stereotypes because of inequality- we have a group in power and they construct stereotypes of lesser groups within society

Paul Gilroy- theories around ethnicity and post colonial theory 

• Post-colonialism is the study of the impact that being under direct rule has had on former colonies. For example, despite being a tiny island, Britain colonised and declared ownership of many countries, including India and Australia.
• These ideas and attitudes continue to shape contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity in the postcolonial era
• These postcolonial attitudes have constructed racial hierarchies in our society, where, for example, white people are by and large given more positive and important roles than BME people
• Media producers are also guilty of using binary oppositions to reinforce BME people and characters as 'others'

• Postcolonial attitudes
• hierarchies
• binary oppositions
• othering 

Attitude presents a very stereotypical representation of gay men

Vogue's inside front cover and double page spread is £157k  whereas attitudes is £9kIndustry:

• Who publishes Attitude?

owned by Stream Publishing Limited- attitude September 2016 

• What other products does the publisher publish?

-Creates magazines for companies

- the use of 'meet the team' makes the website less serious and humanises the company/ website

- customer magazines (genre) 

-stream sell advertising space 

- wing they owned first then brought 'Attitude magazine" horizontal integration - eliminates the competition 

• 
  

- they have cultural capital  
- professional- high up in the company, have a good job, e.g a lawyer or doctor 
- The pink pound- the concept that they have higher disposable income as they are less likely to have children 
- very stereotypical - easier for producers- for financial reasons audience is sold to advertisers - allows the audience to be sold 
- consumerist society- media products only exist to male money 

- advertising makes up a 3rd of a magazine, which is essential to keeping the cover price of magazines down.








- website launched January 2014  
- possibly weren't sure if the website will be successful
-an example synergy - when two things work well together  
- chose not to have a website for a long time 
- website ideology differs from the magazine: the magazine is more classy, where as the website is full of adverts and looks like it is targeting a working class audience (to target a larger audience) - where as the magazine targets a middle class audience 
- website looks similar to the 'daily mail online' 
- attitude online isn't in competition with the print magazine (attitude)

Brand identity is the ideology of the institution (a company) 

Concentration, integration and co-opting publicity

Cultural industry companies deal with risk and the need to ensure audience maximisation by using strategies that are also apparent in other sectors.

• Horizontal integration - They buy up other companies in the same sector to reduce the competition for audiences and audience time.
• Vertical integration - They buy up other companies involved in different stages of the process of production and circulation. Companies might buy ‘downstream’, such as when a company involved in making films buys a DVD distributor, or ‘upstream’, which is when a company involved in distribution or transmission (such as a cable television company) buys a programme-maker.
• Internationalisation - By buying and partnering other companies abroad, corporations can sell massive amounts of extra copies of a product they have already paid to produce (though they will have to pay new marketing costs, of course).
• Multisector and multimedia integration - They buy into other related areas of cultural industry production to ensure cross-promotion.
•  Also important is the attempt to ‘co-opt’ (Hirsch, 1990[1972]) critics, DJs and various other people responsible for publicising texts, by socialising with them and sending them gifts, press releases, and so on. 

- Stream have internationalised there busy through partnering with Vauxhall


An example of multisector and multimedia integration is attitude online and the magazine 




Pick and Mix theory: theories around identity:

-Within 'attitude online' gay men can use this theory through the 'style' section of the website e.g through the article "This week's hottest clothes and accessories"
- They'd then look at this section of the website to form how they want too look and by having such a high focus on fashion (high end products) they are selling a very expensive lifestyle 
- Makes the assumption that the gay audience is very flamboyant and image obsessed- reinforces a stereotype (makes targeting an audience easier as they've constructed the audience)

- there is a focus on gay icons 
-'Gay icons' are named such as they are people who are bold, confident and comfortable in their own skin which may gay people aspire to- also in the opinions section they discuss gay icons which displays that gay people should form their identity due to certain celebrities



Attitude is covering an extremely complex issue in a very simple way 
They use multiple social media platforms to target a larger audience



Clay Shirky- The end of audience theory:

Attitude give its audience very little chance to interact with it 
The magazine has a letters page

online Algorithms

Is Zoella using an Algorithms?

She uses algorithmic logic to appeal to her target audience - she's hyper-real 

• The use of brands (key words) in the title of her videos as well as the thumbnails in order to generate more clicks as they are popular
• Her face is in every single one- it's always the same facial expression 
• Same font- hand written, serif font- in every thumbnail
• Use of her name at the end of each title
• Only need to watch 30 seconds are less of    a video to count as a view

Using algorithms is a highly manipulative way of getting people to watch/ see certain things. This is because people are consciously using the algorithms purely to make sure that the videos are constantly seen and clicked on.

It's not only the producers who use them in order to create content, it's also the platforms on which you use them.

The audience no longer exists- all that remains is a hyperreal construction forged by algorithms- to target a theoretical machine fabricated audience- platforms and producers are targeting a collection of data that will generate them the most money 

Clickbait:

• Clickbait titles are hermeneutic codes and this means that people want to know more- it works due to the curiosity of the unknown 
• Generates clicks 

• platforms such as youtube are trying to create hyper-engagement - pointed out by Guiliaune Chaslot who worked on Youtube's algorithms- by exploiting people into watching certain content

Social media is regulated by OFCOM, however they don't actively regulate sites.

BBC documentary: 

Vlogging documentary

this is down to digital convergence- the internet is very fragmented and is an example of 'narrowcasting', meaning there are more niche audiences 

Online media- Zoella

Online Media-  Media that is distributed using the internet - digital technology 


DIGITAL CONVERGANCE:
E.G radio- BBC podcasts, Youtube- started in 2005 in California, United States 

Youtube only made possible through advances in storage due to the capacity videos need in order to be stored.

Vlogging- Documenting your life through video 
Actual definition- Video blog 
Blog (Weblog) 


YOUTUBE is self regulated 

Web 2.0 - white backgrounds, clean cut 

Vlogging is interesting because the target audience is typically young people 
Its an example of participatory culture - end of audience theory 

• Vlogging has become one of the biggest and most influential form of media-42% of internet users have watched a blog in the last month 
• 50% of 16-24 year olds in the last month 
• Demonstrating the importance of vlogging in young people 
• Producers sell audiences

• Aspirational
• Personal identity- able to relate 
• Identification
• Unscripted narrative
• Authenticity- reality- the idea that your looking at a 'real' person who isn't actually real
• Direct mode of address- the vlogger looks directly at the camera/ the audience 
• Audience interaction

Mini case study- Cat Mojo "Do you understand your cats behaviour?"
Used pseudo science (bullshit science)
Got a hippy/rocker look to him the mise-en-scene of the guitars in the background support this 
Has personality 



Case study: Zoella

• Most popular beauty vlogger in the UK
• Her target audience is really precise and targeted  
• Has 12 million youtube subscribers
• Started in 2009
• She's 28 years old
• 10.9 million follows on instagram
• 13.6 followers on twitter 
• 147th most subscribed channel 
• Has collectively 1 billion video views
• Has a second channel called "more zoella" that has 4.8 subscribers 
• Lifestyle, fashion and beauty vlogger
• Rebranded from 'Zoella' to 'Zoe Sugg'- who also has her own cosmetic brand called 'Zoella' - this could be to try and make her brand more mature 
• Primary form of online communication is Youtube 

Video- "June faves 2016"

• Intertextual reference to Disney film- lion king 
• her facial expressions are very expressive and exaggerated 
• she has a neutral British accent
• Her vocal delivery is undulating with its movements and tones, much more American
• She doesn't swear - if she did she would be demonetised (doesn't get money anymore)
• Frequent jump-cuts - a cut from one thing to the same thing - increases the level of authenticity 
• Mistakes are intentionally left in 
• Her mode of address is like a children's TV presenter 
• Looks like a character from a Disney/pixar animated film 
• Linda Blaker photo shoot reinforces the Disney princess idea  
• She's very child like, petite, slim 
• Doesn't sound like an adult (even though she's 26) 
• Her teeth are a little wonky- not hollywood perfect - makes her more relatable 

Zoella- Media language and representation:

• Homepage and other pages- main page represented to the audience 
• Multimodality- many forms of communication, such as text, images, sound, moving image etc
• - A word or object that you click on to take you somewhere else on the website or another site 
• Hyper-modality- This is what makes online media different from other media products, as things online use hyperlinks with several different forms of communications linking themselves together
• 'Above the fold'- the idea that it needs to be top heavy (all the good stuff at the top) 
• Hyper reality- is beyond reality- 'it's more real than real'

• Thumb nail- preview imagine 
• Footer- copy write 
• Header is normally a name or band
• Navigation bars are there for 'users experience', and allows the user to find exactly what they want as quickly as possible and allows them to explore the page much easier
• Slider/Carousel- at the side of the page allows you to scroll through 
• Banner ads- the ones which are at the top of a site and take up a long horizontal section of the page 
• Search box- at the top of the page 

Media language  and Representation theory-

Claude Levi Strauss- binary oppositions- structuralism 
Roland bart- semiotic codes
Steve Neal - genre conventions
Jean Baudrillard- post modernism 
Judith Butler- gender performativity
Stuart hall- representation
David Gauntlet- identification (pick and mix) 

Voyerism 

Paradigmatic features of the vlog:

• We are positioned in a voyeristic way, placed in the middle of her bedroom, however in Zoella's case this is a binary opposition- she is completely unsexualised 
• Breaks the 4th wall - eye contact/ look at the audience 
• nothing offensive/ distracting in her house/ back ground 
• Constant jump cutting and deliberate mistakes 
• Codes of realism 
• She's human and makes mistakes
• Amateur aesthetic
• Codes of realsim 
• High-key lighting
• Single camera edit
• Invitation into private spaces
• Aspirational content
• Presenter POV
• Unscripted narrative 
• Use of post production filters

Zoella is hyper-reality- she is an ideal- what every teenage girl wants to be 

Jean Buadrillard- 'we live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning' (hyper- reality) 

'Simulation is no longer that of ... substance. it is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal' 



"fuckzoella"- account name on youtube 


Zoella's offensive tweets that she's since deleted:

She conforms to hegemonic roles of beauty and perfection which is why these tweets were deleted as it goes against her brand.



"The Zoella apartment" video:

• Conforms to hegemonic standards of beauty 
• She's aiming for a extremely specific audience which makes secondary audiences less 
• The use of the colours white and pink reinforce her 'innocent' and 'pure' brand 
• Commodity fetishism of her brand 
• Has rented this apartment to launch her new products 
• High key lightening 
• mini increases her cultural capital
• the use of close up angle and casual mode of address is more personal
• her pug always makes an appearance as it's like her child, which shows her still as childish ands someone who doesn't want to grow up
• She never talks about sex 
• She's chaste - 'to abstain from sex'- this is unusually because typically women are sexualised
• The use of a high pitch voice
• Always playing with her hair- stereotypically female
• she is consistently smiling 
• She's like a therapist- constantly welcoming - direct mode of address 
• Positions us as her 'friend'

Close up shot, heavy make-up, conforming to and reinforcing hegemonic acceptable notions of female beauty- this is further reinforced by the mise-en-scene of flowers, which is symbolic of femininity the whiteness of them also connotes purity, femininity, and chastity and makes reference to the housewife archetype   

    Poppy clings to Narla in a close up shot, connoting love, affection and maternal stereotypes. Alfie in the background appeals to the young heterosexual female audience

  Zoella's videos adopt a range of CU shots, providing the audience was an intimate and inviting personal mode of address- the out of focus nature of the shot infers to the target demographic that Zoella is 'real' and relatable, and someone who can be inspired towards- it also represents a performative element of women.

 Her signature is stereotypically 'girly', with cursive serif, handwritten style. It also strongly hints at Zoella's carefully constructed immaturity. This in combination with her trademark giggling and over the top enthuasim and excitement at the slightest thing allows her as a women in her mid 20's to effectively appeal to her a lot younger target audience

 Candles are stereotypically feminine - the high angle shot of the candle box, and zoella's vocal excitement at the fact that it can fold out is a clear example of commodity fetishism
 

Industry and audience:

Hypermodel 
Internet isn't regulated 


Pokemon trailer adapted :
fandom- Henry Jenkins
Stuart hall- reception theory - preferred response- to go out and buy it



Momo 'suicide creature'  has caused a MORAL PANIC with parents