Exam Question - Zoella & Attitude

Exam Question - Zoella & Attitude 

How far can aspects of identity be seen to affect the way in which audiences use online media? Discuss, with reference to Zoella and Attitude. [30]

Plan

• Representations (singular, straightforward or challenging?) - Zoella Represented and how it affects her audiences interaction and her TA as a whole - Pick N Mix Theory - how the audience pick and mix what they feel she represents - Primark = For the people and having a zoella house = a goal, inspirational 
• Mode of address - How Attitude and Zoella talk to their audiences
• Preferred Reading (dominant ideology?)
• Product Placement (commodity fetishism) 
• Target audience (pink pound etc.)
• Hyper-reality (realism?)
• Industry contexts (lack of regulation etc.)

Identity plays a major role in how audiences use online media, audience members will want to associate their own identity with producers of online content that they feel represent them. In this response I will be using Zoella who  has a huge social media following on instagram, youtube and twitter, acting as an example of digital convergence and synergy. Along with Attitude magazine which is the UK's top selling gay magazine that was founded in 1994 and owned by Stream Publishing Limited. I will be using these two example of online media to show how audiences use identity to decide which media producers to follow.

Audiences are not passive, they know what they want to watch and identify with in terms of what content the producer is making, this applies heavily to David Gauntlett's 'pick and mix' theory where audiences will choose certain parts of content they want to identify with and disregard others. So if we consider a producer such as Zoella, she uses this to manipulate her audience into advertising and marketing for her. An example of this is in her video where she goes to the Zoella house, she selects a few fans to go visit so that they essentially advertise her brand on their own social media for her. She creates a relatable identity that manipulates her audience into thinking that they're friends, I will explore this further later on in my response when I talk about representation. Attitude have a strong pull on their audience when it comes to audience because they represent the LGBTQ community since they are the top selling gay publication. This means they can act as trend setters and exploit stereotypes about the gay community in order to manipulate the audience. This is best shown by the 'boys' section on their website that features many muscular white men with their shirts off. This exploits gay stereotypes of that all gay men fantasise about that one type of person that manipulates the audience into craving an unrealistic fantasy.

Since the audience is not passive, they can decide whether they agree with certain ideologies that the producer is putting forward. This lands in Stuart Hall's reception theory and decides whether the audience follows the preferred, dominant, negotiated or opposing reading of the content. This can be highlighted in Attitudes web-page, some audience members who just use the site to find out the news will take a negotiated reading to the use of tabloid style content that focus on gossip and instead just focus on the real news stories. Attitude lean heavily on tabloid stories such as, "Lady Gaga postpones release of new album", this shows the producers using the stereotype that the gay community love gossip and assumes that part of their identity. Halls says himself that stereotypes are created when there is a lack of knowledge that leads to an opinion rather than fact being made, this will often lead to a misjudgement and unfair discrimination against groups. However if we consider Zoella's audience, they are more likely to follow her preferred ideology because she is the producer and face of her content, meaning her audience is there because they relate to her ideologies. This is present in the video where Zoella, Alfie (her boyfriend) and Mark (her best friend) all stay at home and play a board game together. Her audience is going to find this entertaining because they want to watch Zoella, though any other person would find this content tedious; showing that the fact her audience relates to her ideology and identity controls the content they view.

How the producers choose to represent themselves and their content plays a major role in audiences choosing their content; from this we can use Hall to analyse how these producers construct their representation to suit their audience. If we consider the mise-en-scene of a Zoella video, we can see that her costume always has light colours to reflect the innocence of her character, her choice of only using one camera shot and having the setting usually at home gives an amateur aesthetic. She surrounds herself with feminine characters such as Mark who is her stereotypical gay best friend which always expresses the femininity of her videos. All of these features make her the ideal target for a female, white, middle-class audience of 12-16 year old. This is not a mass audience that she targets but it is niche because vloggers target a specific audience that they know will watch her video's. She draws them in by using  emotive content, the show appeals to its female audience through narratives that engage with subject matter emotionally. Zoella continuously tells us how she feels about the problems she faces. However on the other side, attitude use their representation to try and appeal to a mass audience hence why they exploit stereotypes and generalisations of the gay community to try and appeal to as many identities as possible. Attitude target a wide age range from 25-50 year old's through the variety of stories that draw in a huge demographic. This is prevalent in the advertisements they have on the web page. When looking at the travel page and the different holidays they have advertised, you can see how they try to appeal to everyone with expensive holidays that vary from a relaxed get away that is going to appeal to the older age bracket, to festivals that are going to draw the attention of younger readers. This is effective advertising because it appeals to everyone because of the sheer variety, which acts as another way that attitude target such a broad audience that makes them so valuable to advertisers.

The main goal of both Attitude and Zoella is to sell add space because this is essentially how they stay alive because it acts as their main source of income, ad-space on Attitudes web page and ad-revenue on Zoella videos. This is what leads them to create an ideology that relates to the audiences own ideology so they keep returning to their content. Attitude uses their inclusivity and range of audience to advertise a varied amount of products from cars such as Jaguars to Fender guitars. However what is clear from all these products is that they're aimed at a middle class audience because they are expensive products. Zoella on the other hand uses fandom to not just sell ad revenue but also her own products, with access to her loyal audience, she can sell expensive products to her audience. She manipulates the audience into thinking that they need these items, such as her calendar that she famously tried to sell for nearly £40. Henry Jenkins allows us to know that she can get away with this because her fan base worships her and wants to be like her, raising ethical questions of whether she is manipulating her. 

Audiences initially use their identity to select what online content they want to watch because it is them who clicks the video they want to watch. However after that point it is the tech giants such as Google who own Youtube that control what audiences view through the algorithms they use. This applies to David Hesmondhalgh's theory of cultural industries where conglomerates such as Google have a major influence over what audiences view. With the increasing growth of these tech industries and online media, it becomes harder and harder to regulate the content. Livingston and Lunt express that this lack of regulation is dangerous for younger audience members because it is becoming easier for producers to manipulate them into buying products. This happens often throughout Zoella videos when she constantly advertises M&S biscuits but does it by saying that they're her favourite, leaving out that she is paid to say that.

Both Attitude and Zoella give a representation of the perfect life, Attitude uses escapism through the images of overly masculine, muscular, white men. This enforces white hegemony because of the lack of ethnic representation which suggests that the perfect life they're promoting means you have to be white. This reinforces Paul Gilroys post-colonial theory because it shows that white still has hegemonic dominance in media. Zoella on the other hand presents her perfect life through videos such as "Organising my pantry!" which presents the hyper-reality theory put forward by Baudrillard. This shows that audiences watch aspirational content that reflects what they strive for.

To conclude, I believe that audiences choose what online media they view through using their identity to choose a producers ideology that is similar to their own. However once the audience is hooked on this content, the producers begin to manipulate the audience into buying their products and sharing their own ideologies, which means over time they slowly change the identity of the audience to make it easier to sell to them.