Attitude Online: Pandemic 2, audience and fandom

Audience theory on Attitude

1. Albert Bandura: Media effects
1. Suggests media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly
2. With the constant immersive gay nature of the website could probably enforce the ideology that all gay men like to read magazines only about gay people and their lives
3. Bandura would have believed that if a straight man was constantly browsing this website, it would make him gay or rather act in a more stereotypical feminine way
2. George Gerbner: Cultivation
1. Being exposed to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can influence people and how they perceive others and things
3. Stuart Hall: Reception Theory
1. To view a media product is a process involving encoding by producers and decoded by audiences (audiences can interpret the media product different ways)
1. the preferred reading for Attitude is to accept gay rights  and that for a gay audience, it is to be received as a informational and leisure guide for gay people?
2. The negotiated reading could possibly be different peoples way they perceive gay men, some people believe that they very feminine and camp but others would so that they would be as masculine and your average stereotypical man
3. oppositional reading is that gay people have terrible lives and that its not ok to be gay, the magazine displays evidence that shows this etc etc
4. Abberrant reading can be that this is just a magazine for gay men and women to gawk at
4. Henry Jenkins: Fandom
1. Group of people devoted to a media product
2. 
   
5. Clay Shirky: 'End of audience' theories
1. Media consumers have now become producers such as youtube

• Audiences are likely to be influenced by an ideology after being exposed to it over time
• Audiences can form an intense bond with a media product, and use it to define their life
• Audiences can increasingly 'speak back' to a media product, and are more of a producer than an audience member
• Media products can easily manipulate the ideology of an audience member
• Audiences can chose many different ways to how they respond to the ideology of the producer

Attitude Online: Pandemic 1

Stream

1. Stream publishes such magazines as car companies/ mechanic companies like vauxhall, Hertz, P&O cruises and CityJet. Additionally other clients include McColls and Spar, both corner shops of some kind. So it can be said that Stream publishes magazines which are aimed to basic jobs supposedly creating a wider range of audiences
2. Between this and Attitude, Both have received awards, both are aimed to wide range of audience, Attitude is aimed to all gay men and Stream is aimed to customers.  Each display the supposed hegeomonically norms of the average customer/gay person. Such article of Stream includes 'A perfect marriage' and 'Getting away', both which have links to Stream's clients. Whilst Attitude has a 'boys tab' which gives the target audience hyper sexualised representation photos of men.
3. Stream target a very diverse set of ranges. They received best award for customers, suggesting that most of what they talk about is aimed to people who go shopping for certain things. With the 'getting away' article and CityJet as a client. It could suggest that one audience could be people wanting to go abroad.

Why did Stream buy Attitude? Apply Hesmondhalgh and Curran & Seaton's theories.

• For one it could be to get a more diverse audience for a higher profit
• For Curran and Seaton they state that 'the media is controlled by an increasingly small number of companies who are driven by profit'
• This could be due to wanting power in the magazine industries
• Cultural Industries
• For hesmondhalgh, he states that producers try to minimise risk and maximise audience through vertical and horizontal integration. Stream acquiring Attitude was a vertical intergration, making Attitude have wider access an able to publish more broader and more diverse content for gay people.
• By Vertical integration means Stream can acquire more profit as their target audience is now covering a more wider, more diverse area.

Attitude Online

Attitude.co.uk

• An article featuring the drag queen Ru Paul represents gay men in an atypical fashion, indicating that there are many possible representations of gay men. 
• The 'boys' tab allows users to access hyper-sexualised images of men.
• Straight men such as Daniel Craig are presented in a startlingly homoerotic way directly addressing the audience in a voyeuristic and confrontational mode of address 
• Additionally, in comparison to mainstream 'straight' magazines, there are a number of highly sexualised and objectified images of men
• In generally, sexually attractive men are represented as being so through hyper-masculine features such as chiseled abs and huge muscles and penises in tight underwear
• Gay men are also represented as being particularly interested in style and fashion, a highly stereotypical representation of gay men
• Additionally the prices of clothes and electronic products on the articles seem to suggest the target gay audience are independently wealthy. 'The Pink Pound'
• Gay men also represented as being stereotypically sensitive, cultured and even feminine. There is a big emphasis on theatre, drama and theatrical productions such as musicals.
• Every news and entertainment story, regardless of it's subjects, features a 'gay' angle.

• Attitude.co.uk is the UK's best-selling & award winning gay magazine
• Attitude is a simple and straightforward website for a simple and straightforward audience
• Attitude presents stereotypical and straightforward representations of gay men
• Attitude online solely exists to promote the magazine
• Website has low production values

To what extent can it be argued that Attitude represents a singular, stereotypical and reductive representation of masculinity and why?

1. Appealing to a mainstream gay audience to get views
2. by constructing a stereotypical gay audience, it allows the magazine to sell advertising revenue
3. It provides a sense of inclusivity, giving gay men the sense of a community

Media Revision

 Explain two features of mainstream film production. Refer briefly to Straight Outta Compton to support your points. [6]

Film production involves having to create a trailer that will inspire the target audience to watch the finished product once it's released. And also the selling of certain products and novelties to have higher gross. An example of this can be Straight Outta Compton. Here we have a conglomeration, it's trailer is unlike the finished product as it's more family friendly so if a child watches the trailer, there would be no cussing. However the finished product is an 18. Furthermore, the selling of merchandise that would appeal to the target audience such as hoodies with the SOC title on it would gain popularity for the movie.

Online Media

What is Online Media?

• The Internet
• A network system of computers
• Hyper-reality, beyond reality/ Hyper-link goes beyond the text
• Lead to a state of hyper-modality (process of going beyond one format/mode/format) 
• Multi-modality, process of media product that uses different modes of communication
• Same thing
• 'above the fold', all the information 
• Vlog is contraption of video log, aka online diary
• Subgenres
• Makeup tutorials
• Educational
• Travelling
• Fashion
• Lifestyle
• Tech
• Videogame streaming
• Cooking
• Sports
• Unboxing
• Songs
• 50% of 16-24 year olds watched vlogs in 2015
• Research says that 42% of the internet have watched a vlog within the last month
• Their informational and instructional
• There is a huge element of Voyeurism
• There is a sense of escapism
• They are relatable
• Vlogs oftenly do not have a narrative

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• Zoella
• UK based
• 12 million fans
• started in 2009
• has over 1 billion views
• 147th most subscribed person
• Her 2nd channel 'moreZoella' has 4.8 million subs
• Has 727 million views
• Has 13.6 million followers on twitter
• 10.9 million followers on instagram
• Videos
• Low production values and a clear lack of script
• Constructs a compelling and relatable persona for the audience
• Zoella is a 'real person', with faults
• MES high key unnatural lighting, low production values
• Constant reference to the brand primark, a budget clothing superstore, indicating a predominantly working class target audience. Yet does explicate on what Primark actually is or means, inferring a British working class target audience
• Accent- well spoken, maybe forced? Bubbly, colloquial personal
• Use of informal language such as the word 'bloody' indicates a relaxed and informal persona
• Costume is everyday and approachable, comfortable. Low cut top, yet absolutely no sexualisation: atypical representation of women!
• Makeup clearly visible yet not particularly over the top: 'going out' as opposed to 'high fashion'. Zoe sits and talks directly to the camera with very little movement. Video structure is straightforward and repetitive
• Constructs a hyper-real version of herself
• Video resembles a long and unscripted advertisement. A cultivation of materialistic and capitalistic ideologies
• The Zoella Apartment
• 
  

• Logo is right at the top
• Gold and sparkly, indicates stereotypical young, working class female audience
• Sans-serif font is scrappy and shabby, perhaps reflecting the relatable personality
• Social Media icons
• Multi/hyper- modality
• Banner ads
• long and thin advert, specific to online media and may pop up whilst watching a video
• Footer
• bottom of the webpage
• Carousel and slider
• side scroller 
• Menu-bar 
• on the left
• Search bar
• at the top
• Everything here has been crafted to make a familiar and enjoyable experience for the audience
• UX, User Experience
• Videos are arranged in a nice way, each of these thumbnails which are crafted to be nice

• Symbiotic relationship: where a youtuber and youtube rely on each other for money
• Thumbnails exist to entice and try to force you to watch the videos
• She uses a range of theatrical and exaggerated mode of address with her expression
• She does this to try to make the video better than it is
• Hyperbolic mode of address
• Bright. vibrant colours, further anchored by high-key lighting and post-production editing
• Uniform, similarity creates a recognisable brand identity for her target audience
• Use of makeup, reinforces brand identity and hegemonic social values
• Titles, big bright bold colours and text
• Products/ commodities presented, encoding the dominant ideological perspective of consumerism 
• Head is often tilted to the side, gives of the illusion of attractiveness and approachability
• Zoella does repetitive content in order to maximse her click and her revenue

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Zoella Theories

1. Semiotics: The proairetic code created by the pizza thumbnail informs the target audience that the video will focus on pizza, a fast food popular with Zoella's young, female, working-class, target audience
2. Structuralism: A binary opposition is created in Zoella's apartment video, where Zoella is represented as small, petite and vulnerable, while Alfie is masculine, large and confident. This reinforces notions of patriarchal hegemonic values.
3. Postmodernism: The representation of pancakes in the pancake blog constructs a hyperreal representationof Zoella as a hegemonically perfect and flawless woman.

Zoella representation theories

1. Representation`; Zoella presents herself as stereotypically hegemonically attractive woman. Petite and girlish, she reinforces certain expectations of how women should look
2. Identity: the 'FuckZoella' account demonstrates an opportunity for the audience to present their own specific ideological perspective, and to engage with Zoella in an oppositional manner.
3. Gender performativity: Zoella continually self-represents as a sexless, virginal hyperreal construct. This in turn influences and manipulates her young and impressive target audience t follow certain hegemonically constructed expectations of women
4. Postcolonial theory: Gilroy's theory of post-colonial identity assumes that there is a definite hierarchy thats exists with the representations of ethnicity. Zoella presents a hegemonic construction of beauty that assumes that the audience is white. By presenting white ideals of beauty in her videos,  Zoella is effectively symbolically annihilating any representation of black and ethnic minority voices.

Zoella industries theories

1. Power and media industries: Zoella uses algorithmically appropriate and effective titles in her videos in order to ensure that she attracts a much larger audience and maximises advertising revenue
2. Regulation: Zoella was threatened with court action, after not announcing that she was sponsored by a brand on instagram post. However, this example underlines how totally ineffective the regulation of online media is.
3. Cultural industries: Zoella works independently in a small group. Ultimately her business endeavours are vertically integrated, with all forms of production and distribution under her control.

Zoella Audience Theories

1. Cutivation Theory: Cultivating the ideology that makeup is what every girl should wear
1. Cultivating maetrialistic ideologies
2. Fandom: Use of hyperlinks to follow Zoella on many different platforms and ability to contact Zoella through the use of Comments
3. End of Audience: Media in which Zoella started herself as a producer using online media
1. Community are able to subscribe and unsubscribe from following the producer, showing if she doesn't perform she will be losing her following

Utopian solution

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Gender Performance: how people demonstrate their gender through our actions (Judith Butler)

• 'gay man acts flamboyant'
• There is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
• Performativity is a repetitious and ritualistic act that constructs identity
• Our identity only comes as a result of this performative act
• Gender is a performance, whilst Sex is what we biologically are.

For Zoella, performativity for women can be displayed on the mise-en-scene

1. makeup, covered to appeal to men, wearing heavy makeup
1. not particularly sexualised, she appears 'sexless'
2. She seems normal, approachable, a girl on the street
2. Outfit
1. 'normcore' plain jumper, grey and non-form fitting. Cre-neck grey jumper, symbolic pf a standard-straightforward and non-sexualised fashion
3. hair
4. straight boyfriend
5. middle class house, stereotypical girls house, all accessories and flowers
1. Reinforces stereotypical representation of gender
6. Setting
1. kitchen, symbolic of old fashioned representations of femininity, and reinforces hegemonic norms and social values regarding women
7. "boys are too big to get in the back" [of the car], clear distinction between genders. Alfie announced loudly he has been down to the gym, and is wearing a vest, emphasising his body
8. white people
9. performing as a stay at home mother
10. Target audience is teenage girls
11. A clear binary opposition is constructed between zoella, who is small, and alfie who is significantly larger. The binary also constructs diametric opposiiton between genders
12. Zoella's lifestyle: 'i've been busy baking' a clear and gender role is constructed between Alfie and Zoe in their leisure activities
13. Yet alfie subverts representations of masculinity through sharing his life and his emotions. He demonstrates extreme happiness at having completed a gym workout
14. Zoellas gender peformance is arguably subversive. She does not wear any revealing clothing, nor bad language
1. Constructs a stereotypical soft and caring. (Sigmund Freud)
15. Shot of Zoe in bath, covered in ball pit toys and laughing with poppy is a stereotypical girlish construction of gender. DEFIES hint of sexualisation
16. zoella is pushed in to bed by Alfie, in a gesture that briefly hints at eroticism. Yet instead they simulate having a nap while lying down and not kissing. Their gender performativity constructs idealised, non-sexual, childish and loving relationship. Instead, Zoella turns the conversation immediately to candles. Here commodity fetishism replaces any reference to sexual intercourse.
1. A Madonna/whore complex? Zoella is completely sexless, and sells this ideology to her target. In performing in such a way. Zoella reinforces that sex and sexuality are undesirable aspects in young woman 
17. Zoella's gender peformativity creates a complex set of reactions and interactions in her target audience
18. Zoella is asexual, no have no sexual preference 
19. During makeup tutorials we see Zoella with spots suggests she is relatable

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To what extent an Zoella and attitude be seen as postmodern

• breaking the 4th wall is when a character addresses the audience
• Zoella constantly breaks the 4th wall
• Jean Baudrillard: We live in a world where there is more and more infomation, and less and less meaning
• Hypereferentiality: beyond intertextuality, when someone makes reference to themselves
• Zoella relies heavily on other vloggers to create intertextuality

Blog redesign

• much more sophisticated
• less girly, less childish, more adult
• Easy to use, easy user expirience
• Fashion and lifestyle blog
• 
• The pancakes are an example of commodity fetishism
• Creates a stereotypical and hyperreal representation of women
• Zoella is constructing a stereotypical representation metonymical, the pancakes are meant to show that they are as perfect as Zoella, this is meant to direct to audiences that the ideal women must be perfect
• Is run by Team Zoella, suggested she is not a person anymore, she is a brand
• The longer we spend engaged with a website, the more likely we have our ideology cultivated by the website

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In 2017, Zoella released a christmas calendar, it was expensive and was crap

• Zoella's audience was meant to be kids
• The calendar did ruin her reputation
• Many saw this as Zoella taking advantage of her audience 
• This calendar did ruin her image, previous audiences were able to feel related to Zoella however the calendar made the, feel more distant
• Comment left on Zoella's page
• Fuck Zoella 

Controversial tweets

• Extremely disruptive to her image

Machine-learning: the way in which a machine learns such as learning what you like to watch on youtube and gives you a recommended.

30 seconds into a video counts as a view, so Zoella talks gibberish to keep the watchers intrigued until it reaches 30 seconds

Zoella is using the logic of algorithms in order to capture her target audience

producers no longer target their audience, instead they try to target the algorithm so the videos are at the top of the search list

Henry Jenkins

Fandom

Clay Shirky

End of Audience

User engagement: when a product tries to keep you involved in the product for as long as possible
Conspiracy theories are the ideas that the world is against them, people with schizrophenia and paranoia will be more likely to believe in such stuff

A high-engagement person is a euphemism for being addicted to something on the internet

• Reptoids conspiracy
• Famous celebrities are reptiles
• 911 was an inside job
• George Bush
• Hitler survived WW2
• Fled to Argentina
• These all get popular due to becoming viral

Component 2 Section C: Online Media

Video Games

Video Game

• Is a media product with an interactive or ludic element
• Ludic: Latin for 'i play'
• They are more interactive than other media industries
• It is the broadest industry and has a lot of genres
• There is an assumption that videogames do not have anchorage and a deeper ideology
• There is more competition in videogames than other media products such as tournaments
• Substantially higher RRP (Recommended Retail Price), cost a lot more than other media products.
• Games are developed for specific hardware
• Videogames target a specific audience, a dedicated, niche, enthusiastic, core audience.
• Videogames are an extremely specialised industry
• Dichotomy: 2 things that contradict each other, binary/diametric opposition
• The videogame industry is nerdy and niche, however the industry is large and profitable

Fans

• Fandom is not the same as audience
• Fanfiction
• Merch
• lunch boxes
• hoodies
• t-shirt
• Gives us social interaction and makes life more interesting

• Pony's Creed Sisterhoof
• is a great example
• 'the death of the author'
• Clay Shirky
• 'End of audience' theory
• Audiences are no longer passive: they interact with media products in an increasingly complex variety of ways
• Suggests that the audience is the producer
• However this theory is very untrue, it is not entirely convincing, 
• Criticise this theory
• 
  

Steve Neale

• Cover art for Assassin's Creed is repeated over and over again because it sells, all the same genre

Assassins Creed III: Liberation

• Published by Ubisoft in 2012 for the PlayStation Vita
• With a subsequent HD re-release for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
• Trans-national creation as it was developed in Bulgaria, Canada and Italy
• Videogames are extremely expensive to make so they need to sell thousands
• Assassin Creed III: Liberation was too big to fail
• Has a clear and communicatcble story that has an understandable narrative
• The number of sales didn't live up to expectations
• A Sequel and a spin-off
• Wasn't a typical PSVita game
• A hand-held system means you feel more imersive in the system, however
• It was re-released on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 
• Consumers in the west tend to prefer home consoles instead of consoles on the go and that why the PSvita was more popular in Japan
• Assassins Creed's III sold 3 million copies, however Liberation sold 600,000
• Avatar is the technical term for a character you play as in the videogame
• The life bar, map and weapons selector is known as the HUD (heads up display)
• Ludo-narrative dissonance, the gameplay elements get in the way of the story elements
• Trailer:
• High-production value suggests it was made by a major company
• Main protagonist is a mixed race black woman
• Potentially this game is trying to aim towards a mixed race women (A unique selling point)
• Targeted a mass audience as if it was a movie
• Uses black fade
• Slow-motion
• There is no gameplay, parts of a videogame that is interactive
• Only cutscene footage
• The trailer is a link to Sony's distribution Service
• The trailer has a clear and easy identifiable narrative
• A story of a former slave who fights back, such as Django Unchained (Intertextuality)
• Over the top action and violence, makes it looks like the production value is high
• Set in Louisiana
• Offers the audience the pleasure/gratification of escapism
• Touches upon Slavery, can create a controversial topic
• Excellent example of digital convergence. videogame advertised on youtube that acts like a movie trailer 
• Didn't include the sci-fi elements of the game so that the producer could target a larger audience
• David Hesmondhalgh: The Media Industries
• Horizontal and Vertical integration
• Monopolisation
• Curran and Seaton: Profit and Power
• The media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the profit and power
• Media concentration limits variety, creativity and quality
• More socially diverse patterns of ownership can create more varied and adventurous media productions

Death Stranding (2019)

• Death Stranding x Rick & Morty
• Unconventional 
• Subversive
• Mysterious
• Hermeneutic
• Leaves a lot of question
• 
  

• Livingstone and Hunt: Regulation


• BBFC
• Due to the digital technologies, the regulation of all media industries are widely ineffective
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and transformations in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media, have placed traditional approaches to media regulation and risk.
• PEGI is the company that regulates videogames

• PEGI
• PEGI replaced ELSPA
• In 1982, a game called Custor's Revenege was uploaded to Atari. It involves raping a tied up native American woman.
• In 1992, a game called Night Trap was the first game that got BBFC certificate  
• The regulation of video games inefficient, age ratings would not work, so PEGI was used instead

Target audience is 14-21 males

Lots of dark colours

Capture the Zeitgeist

Could suggest why having a female lead in Liberation may have not gone too well

The Proairetic code of the hood promotes violence

Mise-en-scene of weapons 

Read Dead Redemption 2

• The higher the age rating, the younger the audience
• Completely illogical 

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Ubisoft:

• 90's 
• Indiana Jones The Last Crusade: The Action Game
• 00's
• Battle of Prince of Persia
• 10's
• Farcry 4

Super Mario Land

• Came out 1989 on the Gameboy

Plato system

• Started in 1960s
• touch-screen activated

How significant are economic factors in the magazine industry? Woman and Adbusters

How significant are economic factors in the videogame Industry? Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

• First commercialised in Japan
• Space Invaders was so popular that it lead to a shortage of 200 yen coins
• Entire blocks in building were rented out and filled with space invader arcade games
• America followed with Atari
• One such example being Centipede
• At this time, Nintendo existed
• UK
• ZX-Spectrum
• Famous for extremely low-budget games (bedroom coders)
• Early experimentations and generic fluidity

• 1980s videogame crash
• The game that supposedly ruined the game industry was ET
• Games started getting more dull and boring
• Nintendo
• Released a Famicom/NES, which was Nintendo's first console
• They gathered all the American videogames into one console
• Started issuing RPG, role-playing games, such as DragonQuest
• Super Mario Bros came out 1985
• The NES revived videogames
• This created a huge division between American games and Japanese Games
• Japan had more rpg games whilst the US had more of a open world game
• Sega vs Nintendo

• Super Street Fighter changed videogames because it was one of the first multiplayer games

Reverse Pyschology was used to get people to buy the first Playstation in UK

• In London they set up clubs for young adults to take part for Playstations

Digitally distributed: The process of having an online shop sell you games, like Steam

Radio

Radio

• PBS (Public broadcasting service
• paid through licensing fee
• REMIT (set of rules for radios)
• pluralistic ideological perspectives
• However new technology has allowed audience to pick and mix their own music now and not needing to listen to the radio. This links to David Gauntlett's theory of pick n mix.
• Digital technology has allowed audience to produce stuff
• It also maximises accessibility
• Thumbnailing images is a great way of categorising stuff 

Late-Night Women's hour

• Broadcast on BBC radio 4
• Spin-off of Women's hour
• It broadcasts once every month/ an infrequent broadcasting schedule
• Targets a female audience
• was presented by Lauren Laverne
• Usually 11pm on a Friday
• Target Audience is middle aged feminists
• Talk a lot about Feminists issues
• Lexis are well-spoken and articulate and are educated
• Apposition is when 2 things are placed side by side, similar to opposition except they're on the same side
• Targeting an extremely specific target audience
• Established 2015

Broadcasting is distributing a media product to a large audience easily
BBC was established in 1922

Women's hour originally was aimed for house work for women, this reinforced hegemonic norms, making it patronising

How have sociohistorical factors lead to a diversification of media output?

We have such a diversification of media now because of digital convergence

• Stuart Hall: Reception Theory
• Preferred
• Negotiated
• Oppositional
• Cannot relate to what the radio hosts are discussing about at all and find it boring 

Vaginas/pockets radio episode

• Female body odour 
• Then they talk about fashion which is much more hegemonically safer
• 
  

Clay Shirky
End of the audience theory

• 'we are making our own stuff and using them instead'
• Digital technology can now share (produce) music and videos and radio to others