Notes and Research: Write an article on a magazine, genre of your choice and heavily research it.

Could be any layout of article e.g. a rant. Critically take notes and analyse genre characteristics and also the representation of people in magazines. Representation: people are represented in a positive and negative light; however it is not a true picture of the person. Use example of football magazine- genders, social groups, individuals and aspects of the world. Frame work of publishers belief, they will write their opinion. Not a true representation. What groups are being represented, different age groups and genders, positive or negative? Give examples. Age- teenagers, people over 30? Does this match the target audience; are any other age groups shown? How are they shown? Gender how does the magazine represent gender, a dominant gender? How is the other gender shown? Social groups: what social groups are represented? What social issues are represented, positive or negative? Give specific examples. What groups are shown in the magazine, what groups are not there? Absence can tell a lot men, women, old, young missing from the magazine. Stereotypes- often negative, again not a true representation. What stereotypes are in the magazine? Generic Characteristics: typical genre content, what are the pictures like what the article is about, what is advertised in there. Style- is it recognisable. Symbolic- brands as symbols of who they are. Cultural- specific groups, words, clothing, if someone is not part of a culture it can be hard to understand the code. Technical- the way things are normally done in a magazine, number of pages, text/picture ratio, and amount of advertising. Changes over time- magazines are always adapting to their audiences, compare old versions of the magazine to the new one. Use past work to help, knowledge of audience theories and preferred readings.

Old and new contrast pictures FourFourTwo football magazine. There arent many pictures of the entire old versions of this particular magazine. This image I have found is dated back to December 1994, when the magazine was first launched. There are other cover pictures from 2005, as it changes over the years.

The second

picture is taken

from 2005, before Steven Gerrard, won the CL final. The representation of footballers in this magazine is not always true as the publishers have said have a bit of a giggle when writing the magazine. If a player is not doing particularly well, the magazine will make a joke out of that, http://www.fourfourtwo.com/about-fourfourtwo http://www.fourfourtwo.com/funny this link goes to the lighter side of football, where the publishers make a joke out of some of the players or the club. It is not a bias opinion but just someones belief, if they do not like a player one particular week, they will write about him. The title of the magazine is a representation of the traditional 4-4-2 line in which the teams have used for many decades. Typically, managers do not stick to the 44-2 formation so it is not an actual representation of the formations. The upfront part of the magazine tends to take up the majority of the magazine. The magazine is around 200 pages long. The upfront part of the magazine mainly focuses on the funny side; with silly interviews, and non-football related questions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FourFourTwo there are 15 magazines, published around the world, the earliest being in Korea 2007. Other countries include; Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Polish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnam. No real age group represented, more male dominant mens sport. Other gender shown as being a pin up. No mention of women footballers in the UK magazine. Australia version talks about female footballers. The last English women feature was in 2010, still male dominance as women are rarely written about. No present social groups, different groups supporting different teams. Represented in a positive light- all clubs are given a fair write up, still publishers own beliefs. Social issues represented in magazine, poverty around the world footballers giving money to charity overseas, funding projects for disabled children all represented in the magazine. Social media represented in a positive and negative light, publishers want you to buy the magazine rather than tweet about it or Facebook like it. There are over 61,000 hard copies bought and read every issue. The type of class that the magazine appeals to is ABC; the monthly cost of the magazine is 4.50. Examples of cover photos of FourFourTwo from around the world. Stereotypes- often negative within football, if he hasnt been a particular good player in the past, he will not have a good future. Or stereotypes with the football fansone club have the minority of fans that are racist so therefore the

whole fan base is like that. FourFourTwo magazine will not tolerate any racism and there are no stereotypes because no one can predict who is going to have a good or bad season.