Teen Vogue + The Voice

A REVIEW OF THE CSP’S

Teen Vogue might, in a terribly patriarchal way, conjure up images of ultra-feminised vapidity but it has become highly politicised and socially engaged – in fact it has become the go-to news source for a particular slice of the audience (some surprisingly big news editors keep an eye on Teen Vogue’s pages). Go and check out their homepage right now! 

As I write the top stories include abortion rights, whitewashing in Hollywood and youth voting. The mag has been at the forefront of both the gun control debate and the anti-Trump resistance.

Some really useful articles about how Teen Vogue changed and became impactful can be found here, here, and here!

Remember that Vogue is the most famous magazine in the world (it has been doing its thing since 1892. In 1905 Condé Montrose Nast bought the magazine and it has been the heart of the Condé Nast magazine empire ever since. Italian Vogue is the fashion bible and the brand has a cultural impact like no other. Even Playboy didn’t have an undergound dance culture and a Madonna song!

Teen Vogue started as your average magazine spin-off in 2003. After a collapse of sales, due to changes in audience consumption habits, the mag went online only in 2016. It also changed focus. There is some argument to be made that women’s magazines had always been more political and subversive than many expected (Cosmopolitan’s championing of the sexual revolution through articles and advice for example) but Teen Vogue put news and politics first as a way of connecting with what they saw as a more engaged audience (woke in the current parlance). Editor Elaine Welteroth (who was both young, at 29, and African American) steered the online magazine down the path of identity politics (a direction continued by current editor Phillip Picardi). Audience numbers grew accordingly and the politics section is more visited than entertainment.

“The pivot in editorial strategy has drawn praise on social media, with some writers commenting that Teen Vogue is doing a better job of covering important stories in 2016 than legacy news publications.”, Sophie Gilbert.The Atlantic.

• Media Language

If you look at the landing page of the site you need to make sure that you have notes on all the ways that it signifies what it is and what it thinks is important. The logo builds on the heritage of Vogue magazine but the rest of the page signifies how different the product is from the print-based parent title.

Currently (and remember the product could change at any time) the page is organised with a contents list at the top and on a menu bar. Both place “News and Politics” before all other categories. This signifies the priorities of the product.

Headings are presented in sans-serif typeface (making it feel more stylised, youthful or modern depending on your take). Articles use serif typeface which gives them a certain gravitas and authority. The choice of red, black and grey accenting on the page is stylish (in a Bauhaus design way) and not overtly genderised; which also helps the site switch from news to style content seamlessly on the page.

Bauhaus was a German design movement during the interwar period. It has had a huge impact on design since, including print and online publications. Look at the colour and style similarities between this poster and Teen Vogue.

The articles themselves are tiled, which helps to reinforce the online identity of the product; as it is a key difference between this media form and others. The use of the content, menu bar, footed information and links (as well as registration, Log in and Facebook like button) are all standard website features.

The overall impression created by the design is one of competence and contemporary relevance (there are no dated elements). This lends the product an aura of trustworthiness as quality in media production leads to audience trust.

• Media Representation

Look at my stereotyping notes and think about how teenage girls are traditionally presented in the media. This links to the work you have done on feminist theory (a quick set of notes are contained here). Teenage girls, especially in American culture, are presented through a web of stereotyping and patriarchy. On screen they tend to be sexualised and represented by actresses considerably older than the age they are playing and there exist well worn stereotypes (the tv tropes teenage page is really useful here). Often they are presented as vapid, bitchy and cliquey and they seem to only be worthy of representation when they are attractive. Add to that the way that both the media and fashion industries fetishize youth (teenagers presented as adults in U.S. fashion has an icky history back to the use of Brooke Shields in 1980; who was both the cover star for Vogue and appeared in controversial ads for Calvin Klein jeans). There is an argument to be made that, like racial and ethnic minority groups, it is hard to find representation of teenage girls in America that is grounded in the real.

This is what makes Teen Vogue so subversive. Its parent publication has a history of abusing teenage representation and its own history was based on representing narrow concepts of teenage girl identity.

If you look at the landing page’s choice of imagery the majority of the people represented belong to the target demographic. There is also a heavy emphasis on diversity (with few representations of white people, who are traditionally over-represented in fashion media). There is also a heavy emphasis on political engagement and protest as activities.

Further down the page there are the expected celebrity and entertainment images but they either stretch the diversity of representation beyond the expected or they are anchored to articles which have a social and political sense of gravity to them. A good example would be . . .

Janel Parrish Explained Why Mona’s Multi-Ethnicity Was So Important on “Pretty Little Liars”

There are some really interesting things going on here in terms of identity theory and cultivation (Gerbner). By representing certain groups of people and certain actions the product helps to normalise groups and activities which have traditionally been presented as fringe or minority.

A good example of this is the way the product does not allow the short attention-span of online media to dilute key messages; such as gun control. Linked to one article concerning a teenager’s family link to the Sandy Hook mass shooting, is a YouTube video of a demonstration. The representation is of actively engaged young people and of direct action. The cultivation this creates is the expectation that youth action is not unexpected. The stereotype of the activist teenager as a dour buzz-kill (which is a media stock character) is therefore resisted within the product.

If you look at the articles they tend to follow a similar editorial slant. Often the product subverts expectations so that a title which seems to lead the reader to a problematic article about thigh-gap actually turns out to have a body-positivity message.

A key element to the feel of the whole site though is the convergent way it uses video. This can be used to amplify the tone of pages.

The example above came from the thigh gap/ body positivity article which comes under the title of Mental Health. The video is fun, seemingly spontaneous, and sends-up the status of the celebrity video subjects.

On another page a news article about ICE (who are deporting immigrants) is followed by a video about voting for the first time. This finishes the piece with a way to engage with, and possibly change, the discourse of the article.

• Media Industries

If you are asked to write about this then you need to make sure you clearly identify the product as part of the Condé Nast conglomerate. This is a large entity with many mainstream products.

Remember the information at the start of this CSP analysis. When Teen Vogue was a mainstream magazine it flopped hard. The online version of the magazine reinvented itself but shifted to the margins in order to become more relevant to its target audience (6 million Facebook likes indicate popularity).

This search for an audience required an understanding that U.S. teenage girls are currently, to use psychographic segmentation,  more likely to be reformers rather than mainstreamers, this may not always be the case. The next generation might be more aspirational and materialistic. The Overton window (which is a way of thinking about political consensus and shifting public opinion) might indicate that this is a long term trend in which feminist politics and youth engagement, through a positive feedback mechanism, creates more engagement and action.

The Overton window of political attitudes can be shifted through media cultivation. The window can shift along the line of attitudes. If the window shifts to the left once unthinkable ideas (like gay marriage or cannabis legalisation) can become popular, or even policy. If it shifts to the right a hostile environment for migrants and leaving the E.U. can become popular, or even policy (what a terrifying idea!).

You might have to argue that Teen Vogue is shaping the political attitudes of many U.S. women of the next generation. A big media conglomeration is therefore acting as a cultural manipulator; but then all big media entities need to do that in order to survive, they cannot simply follow trends.

What is noteworthy is the way that the producers used looked at the radical end of online publishing (websites such as Vice or Mic) and reshaped the product accordingly. This is part of a regular media process in which the marginal moves into the mainstream. This happens regularly in areas such as fashion or music where styles or genres move from the radical and niche, to the contemporary and relevant, to the mainstream and then finally become passé (outdated).

In this way the producers are building on the approach of other producers in the online sphere.

An industry question might get you to look at convergence. In this case make sure you have video, music and pictorial spread examples to show how the online magazine utilises its platform. Make sure you can explain how this fits with Jenkins’ theories.

• Media Audiences.

It is often hard to unpick Industries and Audiences (and Audiences and Representation – all these divisions are in some ways artificial). After all all industries are looking for audiences and target their products accordingly. This CSP is clearly targeted at a specialist audience (I would hesitate to call a group as large as teenage girls niche). You should really look at my identity notesand my stereotyping notes and think about how teenage girls are traditionally represented and engaged with by media products. How can you use Tajfel and Turner to create an argument about in-group identity for teenage girls created through engagement with the product for example?

What we also need to look at is the ways the audience can engage with, read, and identify with the product (and evidence of this). In the past, with online content, you could use audience comments as evidence. This is made difficult by the way online comments often descend into awful troll spaces. This is especially bad for women and minorities and makes sites feel like threatened and marginalised zones. Vice got rid of their comments and Teen Vogue has clearly followed their trend. There is nothing that is going to ruin the positive vibe you’ve created like a bunch of Trumpist red-hatters trolling “we won – get over it” or “build the wall” under your articles.

There is some comment on their Facebook page but the articles tend to be on the celeb/fashion end and there are fewer comments than you would expect. The place to go for comments is their Twitter page. This again is a bit problematic. There are some comments about articles but there are a lot of men posting comments (mostly against Teen Vogue’s articles but some for). Both of these routes take you away from the main CSP.

Instagram is better. An example you could use is this response to a photo and bio of Sammie Scottie; their Associate Social Media Editor.

9,595 likes and 84 positive comments. Clearly Instagram is where the audience go to engage with the product and show that they are part of, what Jenkins would call, a fandom.

I have put up some information about Stuart Hall’s reading theories and audience positioning and this is what you need to think about here. Clearly, with six million Facebook likes there are a huge number of people who conform to the preferred reading of the magazine. They subscribe to its social and political views.  If you look at the Instagram comments you will see that discussion happens when people are negotiating with the product through their readings and want to start a conversation. You will also see where there are people, usually from outside the target demographic – usually white middle-aged men (facepalm), who take an oppositional stance and reject the preferred reading. You are clever people. Go here and mine for resources.

Also look on the main site for articles which are written by people who are clearly audience members and part of the demographic.

This is part of the interactivity that exists between producer and audience. It is present in all media products but online products are considerably more interactive than most.

Gerbner’s ideas about audience cultivation are important here in terms of the way the magazine promotes progressive politics and encourages open displays of identity and engagement.

There is also a debate to be had about audience segmentation. Is the product a safe space where the audience can go to build a sense of identity or is it a ghetto which allows the target audience group to be cut off from mainstream culture (not represented or engaged with)? This is a huge debate in a multi-platform, multi-producer environment.

Now you need to go to their website and find lots of your own examples for all these debates. Go! Look! Find!

I have written here about why this is a terrible CSP for you to work with.  Clearly the board wanted you to look at a British product (to contrast with the American Teen Vogue) and to look at race instead of gender.

Unfortunately they haven’t looked at the product. Whilst The Voice was a fearlessly campaigning newspaper, with a devoted readership, in the past, The Voice Online is nothing like its forebear. It only has one journalist and I’m sure that its readership has shot up since it was included on the AQA syllabus! It doesn’t effectively cover news stories affecting Black Britons (the Guardian led the way on The Windrush Scandal) and mostly seems to process press releases and cut and paste material. You can refer to this as churnalism and I have put some notes here.

To give you some examples to highlight the problem. Over the last few days there have been a series of crimes in UK cities which have a racial dimension to them (racist attacks, a racial dimension to policing or crimes affecting the black community) but most of these have not been covered by the paper, and the one that was contained no different information from mainstream news sources. Notting Hill Carnival gets only three articles and St Paul’s Carnival, in Bristol, as I have written about before, received no coverage (this was the 50th anniversary and the event had not run for the last few years so it was a big story).

I am concerned that despite claiming to speak for Black British people this product has a tiny, and falling, audience. There are no published figures but if the magazine can only afford one journalist then they can’t have the readership to support major advertising revenue. Unlike Teen Vogue this is not a product that is reaching its target demographic.

What is odd is the way that there is a disconnect between the newspaper and the online newspaper. This was the cover of the paper recently. The exclusive story does not appear on the online version.

Clearly this is not an easy CSP for you to try to write about. So what can you say?

All these notes build on the concepts you have looked at for Teen Vogue. Make sure you are secure in handling the language and ideas for Teen Vogue before you move onto The Voice. I won’t be starting from scratch here.

• Media Language

If you look at how the BBC News website has changed over the past 20 years you can use it as litmus test to see what internet generation The Voice has stuck at. It seems to be between the 2003 and 2008 models. This does mean that the site signifies to the audience that it is a news site (albeit a news site over a decade in the past) with headlines, a news-flash scroll and news images. The use of menu bars on the landing page clearly signify that this is an internet product however some are misleading (the Racism in Football section contains no stories more recent than 2014).

It is hard to talk about design choices and their effect on the audience as few choices have been made recently! Clearly the use of red, white and grey are meant to give the site a certain gravitas. The typeface (sans-serif) is supposed to feel modern but the typeface within articles is blocky and dated. It’s worth thinking about this for a bit. All design signifies values and ideologies to the audience (the two big areas that design connotes are either modernity or tradition – think about shop signage; some shops are meant to make you feel that they are up-to-the-minute with their choice of typeface and colour and others want to feel ye-oldey and rooted in the past) but modernity in design is always being supplanted. What looks modern, and radical, today may well look old in a decade. In the case of The Voice the website followed modern trends but it now subtly signifies that the site has not been maintained or kept up with the times (perhaps it also might signify that the site’s attitudes may be similarly dated).

• Media Representation

You should be able to write about the way the site clearly represents individuals from within the target demographic. Make sure you have examples of images that you can write about which highlight black success. In this way the magazine fulfills the concept popularized by the American writer W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903 of “The Talented Tenth”.

This was the idea that by celebrating the achievements of black success stories and promoting achievement, so that 10% of the black population received higher education or owned businesses, it would elevate the aspirations of the entire black population (basically it was the antecedent of positive representation, positive discrimination and affirmative action).

In some ways this is an easy argument to make. Because the site is reliant on processing press-releases for copy it is full of articles about successful people. Look at the combination of text and image which promotes a positive impression of the person and their achievements.

There is an over-emphasis on sports and entertainment stars on the pages of The Voice (The black Powerlist shows that achievement is from a more diverse field of endeavours) and the Faith section concerns itself solely with black Christianity (at least 15% of the black British population is Muslim). This Faith section also links to both News and Entertainment through the coverage, and representation of, gospel music which makes the site unusual in the U.K. as there is rarely in white Christian culture a crossover between religion and entertainment.

Because The Voice is actually owned by The Gleaner Company in Jamaica (which has its own Jamaican paper) there is representation of key Jamaican individuals in the paper.

This has the effect of shifting perception of importance. Jamaica takes on more psychogeographic importance, in the site, than other places. Black Britons who have African heritage are now more numerous than those with Jamaican heritage but there are fewer stories concerning Lagos than Kingston.

• Media Industries.

As you are no doubt aware by now there are two stories that you need to know concerning the industry aspect of the product.

1: The Origin Story.

To get a grip on the background I’m going to send you to two sources. First watch the the first two minutes of this music documentary made for a primarily American audience. It explains the post-colonial reasons why there is a Caribbean black community (and African) in the UK and quickly gives you some images and background. Much more disturbing stuff is here in this documentary about the Brixton riots of 1981.

In the early 80s there was a strong sense from within the black community that they needed a newspaper for the community. Events like the riots were being reported on by journalists (on T.V. and in print) who were often negative towards black people. Even if they were positive they were outsiders who didn’t really know what was going on. Black people were always being represented from a white person’s perspective (in this way this links to the post-colonialist ideas of Edward Said).

Val Mcalla

Val Mcalla started the paper in 1982 from a small council flat in east London. I am sure this is why the board have included this CSP. The paper was an independent (different from the big conglomerate Teen Vogue product). It started with a print run of only 4000 copies but within eight years was shifting over 53,000 copies a week.

The paper aimed itself squarely at the second generation of black Britons. Those whose experience did not lead them to look at another country as home.

McCalla managed to secure funding from two interesting sources. The first was the Greater London Council (The GLC). This was run by Ken Livingstone and was often in direct opposition to the Thatcher government of the day. Livingstone was a supporter of minority and working class groups and he thought the council was a big enough to act as a bulwark against Thatcherism (spoiler alert – eventually she disbanded the GLC to get rid of the big opposition across the Thames – the GLC building is now a hotel and aquarium). The other place was Barclays Bank. The bank had been the subject of high levels of criticism because of its investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Supporting The Voice would be a good P.R. move.

There exists a long list if massively influential black British media, journalistic, and political,  talent who got their break and honed their skills on the paper. Here’s a little wiki-list!

“Well over a hundred people have worked for The Voice newspaper over the years, including former Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Phillips, former BBC and currently Al Jazeera newsman Rageh Omaar, ITV’s Martin Bashir, authors Diran Adebayo, Leone Ross, and Gemma Weekes; film maker and novelist Kolton Lee, novelist Vanessa Walters, broadcasters MTV Jasmine Dotiwala, Henry Bonsu, Dotun Adebayo, Onyekachi Wambu and publisher Steve Pope, among others.” -Wikepedia entry (how lazy am I?)

The paper, and its subsidiaries won lots of awards and were responsible for pushing black issues up the media agenda the U.K. The issue of police racism and harassment being the defining story (a lens if you like through which you can see the purpose of the paper – mainstream media was not reporting the issue or framed it through the perspective of the police, government and lawmakers). The Voice acted in the way a newspaper should – giving people the news that they needed to help them.  All good stuff.

Now for the bad.

McCalla wanted to create a media empire which centered on the paper (much like Condé Montrose Nast had with Vogue magazine). Unfortunately these ventures failed; some fared poorly in the changing media landscape others collapsed through a series of poor decisions.

By the late 90s the paper was in a bad way. There were financial irregularities, lots of staff sackings, the readership dropped to 12,000 and the paper was not faring well against the new rival, The New Nation (which seemed much fresher and more in tune with the zeitgeist).

When McCalla died in 2002 the whole enterprise was thrown into disarray. It was not financially viable and was sold to The Gleaner Group in Jamaica in 2004. This media group already had a presence in the UK (ironically The Gleaner was one of the newspapers, consumed by Jamaican migrants, which The Voice had supplanted in the early 80s – although it still sells). My previous notes about psychogeography link to this acquisition.

There’s not much more to tell as information is sparse. I can’t even tell when the website was set up! In industry question terms you are going to find it hard to write about convergence as there is little video on the site. There are also few instances where the site lets images do the talking.

You could write about the way The Voice has both Instagram and YouTube presences which allow it to connect with a new audience (although the views are paltry – few seem to get more than 100 views on Facebook and the Instagram account has 14 thousand followers but only over 1000 following).

• Media Audiences.

There are no comments on any of the stories on the website. There are some comments on both the Facebook and Instagram pages – but not many.

If you are asked about this you may well have to couch an argument partially in the past; the paper used to have a key target audience. You might also be able to write about the paper by focusing on the Faith section. The paper gives representation to black Christians, and black Christian culture – including gospel music, in a way no other media product does.

That said the board, in its notes, writes about Clay Shirkey’s “End of Audience” theory as a possible area of study here. In some ways this theory explains why the audience has left The Voice Online as it is an old, top-down, non-interactive product. This becomes a hard argument to follow up as you would have to start to write about the media products who have succeeded (Gal-dem would be a great example) but how is the average Media student supposed to jump from discussing the CSP to talking about completely different products? Stick to the CSP as far as possible but be aware of its limitations. It’s all you can do!

Exemplar Essay: Paper 2.

To what extent have concerns about identity had an impact on the production and consumption of media products?

Refer to The Voice Website and Teen Vogue to support your answer.

[25 marks] (On the paper you are given two and a half, wide-spaced, pages to answer in. You can always add additional pages but this would suggest that a 500 word answer would be about the right amount – although I have, as usual, bust my own word limit.)

The production of both products is closely linked to identity concerns in the context of their initial creation.

The print version of The Voice was first produced in 1982 in response to concerns within the British black population. The 1981 Brixton riots had demonstrated the dispossession felt by second generation black people. Media representation was often negative and rarely from a black perspective. This is an example of Edward Said’s post-colonial theory of Orientalism but one where the people being misrepresented live within the same country as those representing them (thus truly post-colonial). Val Macalla’s aim, in setting up the paper (and its online descendant) was to allow black journalists to tackle issues affecting the black audience, and from their perspective; sections such as “Racism in Football” and “Faith” (with its emphasis on black churches and gospel music) allow the site to do this.

Teen Vogue on the other hand was set up in 2003. It was revamped, and moved online, as a response to the disruptive technology of the internet on magazine sales in 2015 and changed focus, under the editorship of Elaine Welteroth, to centre on news, politics and identity issues. Teen Vogue is a part of a big media conglomeration (Condé Nast) and is an example of such a producer targeting a particular audience, in this case teenage girls. In doing so it has successfully identified the interests of its audience (against stereotype). This means that news stories concerning gun control are given more weight than articles concerning make-up. Even within the articles Teen Vogue often skews towards politics and identity concerns in a way which fits its engaged audience so that a recent article on thigh gap is actually a piece on body positivity rather than dieting and exercise and an interview with Janel Parrish about “Pretty Little Liars” is about multi-ethnic representation.

Both products therefore demonstrate Gauntlett’s theories concerning the fluidity of identity which are also clearly identified by applying Tajfel and Turner’s concepts about group formation and sense of worth. Teen Vogue’s landing page recently featured more images of teenage girls as activists, protesting and giving speeches, than behaving merely decorously. The Voice clearly represents black success (in a way that reflects W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “the talented tenth”) with images of black athletes, musicians, sport speople and business leaders. In this way both products are clearly positively shaping the way the audience feels about themselves and normative behaviour (which is also part of Gerbner’s cultivation theory).

Unfortunately The Voice has suffered from a lack of investment which affects both the production of material specific to the identity group and the way the identity group identifies with the product. The site only has one journalist who produces churnalistic copy. The, previously mentioned, “Racism in Football” pages have not been updated since 2014 and there is a lack of reporting, especially investigative reporting, so that big events affecting black Britons (such as the recent Windrush scandal or the 50th anniversary of the St Paul’s Carnival) receive poor, or no, coverage. There is also an over reliance on material from The Gleaner, in Jamaica, which has the psychogeographic effect of diminishing other sources of migration. The tiny Facebook and Instagram followings the site has indicate that it is not connecting to its audience.

Identity concerns are central to the audience’s consumption and response to Teen Vogue. Response is not as direct as earlier iterations of Web 2.0 as the site has followed others, such as Vice, in removing comments; current, alt-right, social media usage often results toxic negativity (there is some evidence of this within the Twitter comments for the site, less so for Instagram). Instagram is where the audience engages most with the product as the positive comments about pictures of Sammie Scottie (a staff member) show. The number of likes (six million) also shows massive audience connection.

The Voice Online has lost its identity audience (evidenced by a complete lack of comments and tiny social media followings and viewings) because other products, such as Gal-Dem, more successfully utilise the opportunities of the online platform (following Clay Shirkey’s “end of audience” theories) which blur the distinction between producer and audience. Teen Vogue successfully does this with readers supplying feature content (such as the recent article written by a girl whose brother was a Newtown victim and reader’s Prom and Homecoming picture content).