Social groups

Social groups

“A social group is a collection of people who interact with each other and share similar characteristics and a sense of unity. A social category is a collection of people who do not interact but who share similar characteristics.”

Representations:

Teenagers – Always partying, drinking alcohol, problematic, sleep all day, untidy etc.  

Females – Do all the cooking, always cleaning, take care of the children, have less dominance than men, don’t play sports, have ‘clean jobs’ e.g. Secretary, teacher, librarian.

Males - Love cars, lots of dominance, have “dirty jobs”, play lots of sport, lazy, messy, don’t cook or clean, enjoy looking at women.

A social group is an important aspect to consider when targeting a specific target audience. Stereotypes of certain social groups can act as signifiers on magazines, for example, if a car is featured on the cover of a magazine, the assumption will be that it is target audience is men.

Music

Social groups within music concern those who unite over a certain type of music e.g. rock, pop, rap etc. People within these groups are able to relate to each other as they have similar interests.

Music magazines of a certain genre aim to target these groups by including the features that would appeal to the group.

When targeting a certain audience, you aim to meet the uses and gratifications theory in order to interest the audience.

Uses and gratifications theory:

1.    Social interaction

2.    Inform and Educate

3.    Escapism

4.    Relate

5.    Entertain