How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
There are a number of concepts that need to be addressed to answer this question fully.
- Who is you audience?
- How did you fulfil your audiences needs and expectations?
- What is meant by distribution?
- Who owns and controls magazine distribution
- How are real media texts distributed in the online age?
Audience
You must define and describe your audience in these ways.
- Demographics and Psychographics – audience segmentation
- You should also use your Yougov findings to explain what other media texts they consume as well as other information.
Uses & Gratification
- You should link specific elements of your magazine (contents, bands, representation, language, design (fonts / graphics) to specific uses and gratifications that you think your audience have. Refer to Blumler and Katz’ ideas and also AIDA:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
Distribution
- Complete this work sheet in order to explore magazine ownership & distribution.
- Read the three articles below (also in the work sheet) in groups in order to research the business of magazine distribution and the challenges created by the internet & social media.
Research Articles
- Article from journalism trade rag on decline in magazine sales.
- How print is surviving in the digital age.
- Facebook & Google – a digital duopoly?
Institutional (Distribution) Issues
- Audiences expect to get their media for ‘free’
- The younger audience don’t like to read.
- Quality (factual) journalism is expensive and so is traditional print and distribution.
- However, it’s hard to make money out of online content.
- Most of it goes to FB & Google, leaving everyone else scrabbling for the scraps.
- Exclusives remain ‘exclusive’ for about 10 seconds before it’s all over social media.
- How do you square this circle?