Although the brand name suggests a teenage audience, the typical Teen Vogue reader has evolved in recent years. The move to more political content has broadened the appeal and changed the genre – young women now expect more from their media.
The ‘Campus Life’ section in Lifestyle also suggests an older readership. However, the audience is still interested in celebrity content and beauty – which Teen Vogue addresses by featuring the ‘opinion leaders’ (two-step flow) of social media.
Generations
Generation X: Born between 1965 – 1980
Millennials / Generation Y: Born between 1981 – 1995
Generation Z (or iGen): Born 1996 – 2010
Teen Vogue: political positioning
Teen Vogue generally takes a liberal, left-wing political stance and positions its readers to become active in their support:
- Pro-feminist
- Pro-gender fluidity and gender identity
- Supports LGBT equality
- Pro-multiculturalism
- Supports Black Lives Matter
- Pro-environment (accepting science on climate change)
- Pro-choice (abortion)
Teen Vogue: audience interaction
How does Teen Vogue encourage audience interaction?
- Activism
- Social media
- ‘Clickbait’ and first-person headlines
- Events – Teen Vogue summit
Representation
Changing representations
Feminist bloggers and websites such as Rookie and liberal blog Jezebel have been credited with changing the representation of women and feminism in the digital age.
This can be linked to Clay Shirky’s ‘end of audience’ theory with digital influencers changing the media landscape for women – and established mainstream brands like Teen Vogue are following to stay relevant.
1) Analyse the Conde Nast media pack for Teen Vogue. What is the Teen Vogue mission statement and what does this tell us about the target audience and audience pleasures?
Teen Vogue's mission statement is to educate, enlighten and empowering. They are aiming for a more educated young audience around the age of 25.
2) What is the target audience for Teen Vogue? Use the media pack to pick out key aspects of the audience demographics. Also, consider the psychographic groups that would be attracted to Teen Vogue: make specific reference to the website design or certain articles to support your points regarding this.
The target audience that Teen Vogue is aiming at is teenagers and younger adults as they are on digital platforms and the younger adults and the teenagers are more active on social media. The psychographics that Teen Vogue are aiming at would be reformers as reformers are looking for a change and Teen Vogue does that on their website and social media.
3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?
Personal relationships can be found in Teen Vogue in where the audienec will be able to relate it back to their own real life situations. I do not think there is much difference from a traditional print-based magazine.
4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?
The audience is positioned to respond the political news is through Teen Vogue's social media pages such as Instagram, twitter and many other social media platforms.
5) How does Teen Vogue encourage audiences to interact with the brand – and each other – on social media? The ‘tentpoles and editorial pillars’ section of the media pack may help with this question.
Teen Vogue's summit allows the audiences to interact with the brand and they are encouraging to make new connections with people that are just like them in the summit.
Representations
1) Look again at the Conde Nast media pack for Teen Vogue. What do the ‘tentpoles and editorial pillars’ (key events and features throughout the year) suggest about the representation of women and teenage girls on teenvogue.com?
The stereotype of teenage girls are subverted through this and this shows that apart from fashion that they are also interested in the political views and social affairs in the world.
2) How are issues of gender identity and sexuality represented in Teen Vogue?
These topics for Teen Vogue allow the audience to see the negative sides and this prevents the idea of a traditional print magazine even though teen vogue is digital now.
3) Do representations of appearance or beauty in Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge traditional stereotypes?
in some ways it is reinforced and some certain areas of the website it is challenged. They have some models for example they had Skai Jackson be natural and let out her afro hair for the magazine but in other sections they have models or celebrities with a ton of makeup and costume.
4) What is the patriarchy and how does Teen Vogue challenge it? Does it succeed?
Patriarchy is when in society men hold more power than the females. Teen Vogue does challenge this as most of Teen Vogue is about empowering females and their roles in society should be equal as men.
5) Does Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge typical representations of celebrity?
Teen Vogue does a mix of reinforcing and challenging them as they do not make the celebrity be sexually objectifies towards the audience.
Feature: how Teen Vogue represents the changing nature of media aimed at women
Read this Quartz feature - The true story of how Teen Vogue got mad, got woke, and began terrifying men like Donald Trump - and answer the following questions:
1) How was the Teen Vogue op-ed on Donald Trump received on social media?
One twitter user said “Who would have guessed @TeenVogue might be the future of political news. Unreal coverage of the election.”
2) How have newspapers and magazines generally categorised and targeted news by gender?
For the females newspapers and magazines have shown beauty,fashion and cooking in their products usually. On the other hand the men have it categorized with health, fitness and much more stereotypical ideas attached with men.
3) How is this gender bias still present in the modern media landscape?
The gender bias is still present in the modern media landscape as it still is represented in modern media the traditional stereotypes attached with the different genders.
4) What impact did the alternative women’s website Jezebel have on the women’s magazine market?
Jezebel challenged traditional print magazines that were targeted at females by showing that females can also have political views and have an interest in the world affairs going on apart from focusing on fashion,beauty and cooking.
5) Do you agree with the writer that female audiences can enjoy celebrity news and beauty tips alongside hard-hitting political coverage? Does this explain the recent success of Teen Vogue?
Yes i do agree as the female audiences also have interest and view points about the political coverage alongside the celebrity news and beauty tips. That is why Teen Vogue is successful as other magazines targeted at females did not realise that but Teen Vogue did therefore they are so successful now.
6) How does the writer suggest feminists used to be represented in the media?
The writer suggests feminists 'struggled to overcome the perception that they were sexless, grim bra-burners, uninterested in pleasure or aesthetics.'
7) What is the more modern representation of feminism? Do you agree that this makes feminism ‘stereotyped as fluffy’?
They in the modern representation of feminism are mostly presented strong and independent and in some little aspects they are still 'stereotyped as fluffy'.
8) What contrasting audience pleasures for Teen Vogue are suggested by the writer in the article as a whole?
The female audience can enjoy reading about the world news and political views.
9) The writer suggests that this change in representation and audience pleasures for media products aimed at women has emerged from the feminist-blog movement. How can this be linked to Clay Shirky’s ‘end of audience’ theory?
People are now longer passive vessels when consuming media is what Clay Shirky talks about.
10) Is Teen Vogue simply a product of the Trump presidency or will websites and magazines aimed at women continue to become more hard-hitting and serious in their offering to audiences?
I think they will be continuing to be become more hard-hitting and serious in their offering to audience.
I think they will be continuing to be become more hard-hitting and serious in their offering to audience.
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