Tuesday, 8 October 2013

To what extent should magazines be held responsible of the social ramifications of the representation they offer?

To what extent should magazines be held responsible of the social ramifications of the representation they offer? 

   The magazine industry in todays society have power over their audiences and can change the ideology of the readers, this can either be in a good way like advice on relationships or can have bad effects on the audience like self esteem issues causing mental health issues like eating disorders or bullying because of the readers image.
   The teenage girl magazines have a huge demographic of consumers who can find out about future fashion trends, relationship advice and celebrity news that can bring good connotations for the audience which is shown in the representation of the teenage girl image.
   However with this power comes bad outcomes including a huge number of girls getting bullied either over the internet or the playground because they don't share the same ideologies, this can have major problems like suicide, eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia and comfort eating), self harming and other problems which can be caused by the magazine industry.
   some of reasons why these reasons are caused are because of the ideologies presented to the audience. some of these factors are the media using celebrities as punching bags, change in fashion constantly, the perfect body image always presented even though they are always using airbrushing.
   should the magazines be held responsible or should the audience be less controlled by what the media say? some might argue its too hard to escape the media and the audience can't control their behaviour because of the hypodermic needle theory, meaning the media puts information into our passive minds and this causes the behaviour of the audience with the use of stereotypes and other ideology. others would argue the audience takes from the media what they want and need and so its the audiences fault for the negative affects that are caused.
   to conclude its partly the fault of the magazines because they have got set ideologies and don't give other options for their audience but its also partly the audiences reaction thats at fault because the they are the ones buying the magazines that cause the problems and could buy a different type or brand of magazine.

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