Genres and Magazines
Magazines are categorised by audience as much as by genre. While there are clear genres of magazines such as consumer magazines, trade journals and scholarly journals, consumer magazines are often displayed by audience gender and publication frequency (women's weeklies, women's monthlies, ect.) rather than by genre.
The Big Issue is highly unusual in being defined by its contribution method: street sales by vendors. Thus, though it shares some content and style conventions of more mainstream magazines - especially lifestyle magazines, political magazines and entertainment magazines - it is free to challenge these and does not rely on being recognisable on retailers' shelves. This allows it to move its masthead around, not carry a barcode and completely change the style of front cover from one issue to the next. It still completely change the style of the front cover from one issue to the next. It still retains basic magazine conventions - a cover image, cover lines, a masthead, a sell line and date line, but its content is hybrid and unpredictable.
The David Tennant issue, for example reflects how celebrities feature predominantly in lifestyles or entertainment magazines. The Martin Luther king cover, on the other hand, reflects the presentation of issues in political magazines.
Media Language and Technology in Magazines
Print technology offer the opportunity for the front cover to use visual impact to sell the magazine. A print front cover is generally simpler, less detailed and more coherent than a website home page, for example, with a clearly framed layout in which all the graphic design elements can be controlled. This enables the two covers to of the MLK issue and DT issue to offer strikingly different designs - the retro feel of the MLK cover contrasting with the quasi-documentary sparseness of the DT cover.
The layout of both front pages is dominated by the image, using print's advantage in allowing the image to be scrutinised and, if required, contain dense detail, as in some of the montage front covers celebrating street vendors.
Intertextuality in Magazine Media Language
Both Big Issue front covers are intertextual, in order to quickly suggest a world of content to be discovered within its pages, to connote shared experience with the audience, to flatter the audience.
The MLK cover does not make direct reference to other media products, but the image used suggests a media representation of the man - King as a cultural product as much as a real person, a product whose positive connotations of highly moral political activism the magazine might appropriate.
The DT cover references two media products directly:
- 'The Shape of Water' - a newly released film
- 'The Doctor' - a reference to Tennant's role as a Doctor Who on the BBC.
Both products are considered famous enough to require no explanation, suggesting a shared experience with a culturally aware audience and valuing both products culturally.
Viewpoints and Ideologies in Media Language
The MLK cover uses media language via the dominant image of King and his dream to express support for his battle for civil rights and to question whether his legacy has been honoured. The Big Issue is rooted in campaigning, but also needs to appeal to as wide an audience as possible in order to support its vendors. So the choice of Martin Luther King (this was the fiftieth anniversary of his death) to depict the issue of civil rights is perhaps because of relative lack of controversy surrounding him. He is posed as if looking into the future with confidence, juxtaposed with symbols of America, next to language that uses a rhetorical question ('What happened to the dream?'), referencing his most famous speech. This almost religious imagery, representing King as a secular saint, further suggests that his righteous battle has not been won. This media language suggests both anti-racism and individualism - the former in the reference according to King, the latter in the focus of the cover layout on one man.
The DT cover incorporates individualism ion its focus on the star individual. The media language suggests an almost casual acquaintance with members of the royal family ('Meghan and Harry: coffee with The Big Issue'), which connotes both a recognition and approval of these royals but also a lack of deference.
Media Language and Media Contexts
Magazines commonly reflects celebrity culture, the influence of which can be seen in the layout of both Big Issue front covers. King is a celebrity political activist whose face is instantly recognisable; Tennant is a celebrity actor.
Magazines, such as this, that engage with current affairs, will reflect political contexts, especially political debates about the issue of homelessness. In the MLK front cover, the political authority given to violent protest is reflected in both the use of his image and the language chosen to discuss civil rights.
Sub-topic Notes
Representation: Selection and Combination
Magazines select and combine to create representations that will reflect their brand and set the appropriate tone for the magazines as a whole. The Big Issue, for example, is a brand with a mixed tone. Its pitch to advertisers (www.bigissue.com/advertising) states that it offers 'provocative, independent journalism' and 'high-profile exclusive interviews' with celebrities.
The MLK cover, for example, chooses to combine icons of America - the stars and stripes and the outline of mainland USA - with a stylised image of Martin Luther King and a reference to his most famous inspirational speech from the 1960's. It positions the issue of civil rights in contemporary America within the context of a long political struggle. This suggests solidity with civil rights protesters, an affliction with the less powerful in society and a thoughtful, historically informed view of current events. All of this chimes nicely with the values of The Big Issue as a brand - 'to dismantle poverty by creating opportunity' (www.bigissue.com/about).
The DT cover chooses to combine an apparently unstated photograph of a famous actor with language suggesting his vulnerability. This suggests both a conventional interest in the culture and entertainment industries and a concern with the authentic person behind the glossy appearances. Similarly, the magazine boasts of its association with royalty but does so in a down-to-earth way - 'Meghan and Harry: coffee with The Big Issue' - that avoids suggesting fawning over the monarchy.
Magazines: Realism and Constructed Reality
Magazines are usually held to lower standards of realism than newspapers, depends on their genre, but magazines such as The Big Issue are governed by the professional ethics of journalism and aim to provide a truthful portrait of the world. The Big Issue has a slightly unusual perspective, often assuming the point of view of the homeless, as in the article linking Martin Luther King's quest for civil rights with the issue of street living today in the town where he was assassinated (Memphis). The magazine may well claim that this offers an extra dose of realism to its representations. The two other articles promoted by cover lines - on Brexit and the Commonwealth Games, on the other.
The celebrity orientation of the David Tennant cover carries fewer claims to realism, but the seriousness of the magazine's approach is signified by a focus on the personal difficulties of fame. The cover lines do also include one referencing and informative article about Dogger Bank as well as two more entertainment / celebrity-centred articles.
Social, Cultural and Political Contexts
The front cover of magazines are like adverts for the magazine, so in the same way as with advertising they tend to reflect the influence of consumerism. This is particularly true of lifestyle magazines, where images and descriptions of lifestyles reflect our consumers society's ideals of a 'good life'. This is perhaps less true of The Big Issue branding, but some of its front covers do cover lifestyle issues such as Issue 1300's cover: 'How to be happy: Your essential guide in a world gone wrong'. However, even here a serious political context is referenced as the graphic includes a representation of North Korean intercontinental missiles to suggest a 'world gone wrong'.
The Big Issue exists to highlight and alleviate homelessness and poverty in what it sees as a political context in which neither are adequately addresses. Those who sleep on the streets have little power or status, so the magazine deliberately celebrates their individuality and achievements. In doing so, it hopes to challenge and shape public perceptions.
Celebrity culture is a major influence on the representations of Martin Luther King in the two covers sampled. The covers expect the audience to recognise and understand the cultural role of these two figures without explanation as they are both global celebrities.
Multiculturalism has influenced the representation of Martin Luther King in so far as the cover expects it audience to adopt the perspective of people of colour without difficulty. Liberal news sources in the 1960's would also have covered the events sympathetically, but from a far Whiter perspective.
Stereotyping in Magazines
Font covers of magazines need to communicate messages rapidly so often resort to stereotyping. The Big Issue is less likely to need to use this tactic due to the way it is sold, but it is unlikely that any front cover could avoid stereotyping entirely.
The sell line on The Big Issue - 'A hand up not a hand out' - replaces the negative stereotyping of the 'hand out' (either as patronising charity or welfare scroungers) with the positive stereotype of the 'hand up', suggesting aspiration and achievement.
The MLK cover uses positive stereotypes of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movements to signify the 'dream' of racial and ethnic equality. The images of America used - the stars and stripes, the outline of mainland USA - both active stereotypes of America (seeing itself as the patriotic land of freedom), and Martin Luther King's far-seeing pose suggests positive stereotypes of political leadership.
The DT cover references a positive stereotype of Doctor Who as a culturally significant character role and of Harry as the young caring prince.
Under-represented or Misrepresented Groups
The representation of homeless people and the issue of street living in The Big Issue is a deliberate attempt to remedy a systematic under-representation in the mainstream media. The magazine encourages writing by homeless people as 'outsiders' lacking dignity and self-respect by associating them with these more culturally central and successful people. For example, the MLK cover links the man's message about civil rights to the issue of street living in Memphis and the DT cover links homelessness to royalty in the cover line about Prince Harry.
Both theses covers we have analysed feature men. A quick survey of the last 40 editions in April 2018, shows that 18 feature men only on the cover and two feature women only, suggesting under-representation of women compared to men. The MLK cover is one of the only two covers to feature a person of colour as the sole cover image, again suggesting under- representation of ethnic minority groups.
Discourses, Ideology and Audience Positioning
The MLK Big Issue cover positions the audience as concerned about political issues and current affairs, knowledgeable about King and the civil rights movement and sympathetic to their aims. It positions the audience as internationalists.
The DT cover positions the audience as cinephiles (film-lovers), interested in entertainment news and the 'inner life' of actors, especially David Tennant and familiar with the British royal family. The reference to 'Doggerland' may be deliberate enigmatic, and thus weak in its ideological positioning, in order to entice readers.
Both front covers embody individualism as a core ideology as both focus on individuals (though in the case of the MLK cover this is done to illustrate a social and political issue). The DT is more ethnocentric, but the fact that the MLK cover is clearly internationalist suggests that this isn't a systematic bias on the part of the magazine.
The under-representation of women on the front covers shown in the figures above may suggest a systematic bias, which might reflect the influence of sexism, and the under-representation of people of colour may reflect the influence of racism. However, this does not have to be conscious racism and sexism on the part of the publishers, but may reflect either unconscious bias or a reflection of the effects of racial, ethnic and gender inequality in the world that is represented, rather than bias.
Representation: Audience Response and Contexts
The Big Issue magazine can assume some empathy with the plight of the homeless on the part of its audience, but otherwise has to cater for a diverse audience. Big Issue readers are probably more likely to be left-wing and this is reflected in the tine of the magazine. This means that more right-wing readers might take exception to the representations and the magazine is less likely to find agreement among the politically apathetic.
The entertainment focus of the Big Issue is on popular entertainment, especially film and television. So cultural conservatives who value high culture over popular culture may reject these messages.
