Media Studies

Advanced GCE in Media Studies H409/03/04 Making media

Statement of Intent

Centre number Centre name

18125 City College Norwich

Candidate number:

Candidate name: Dylan O’Sullivan

Brief chosen:
Magazine and online

How do you intend to use the four areas of the media theoretical framework to communicate meaning and
meet the requirements of your chosen brief?

Product 1
For my magazine, I have an audience of 16 – 25 year old’s, there is a lot of different demographics and
psychographics within this age range, so I have the opportunity to represent a lot of different people. I understand
what needs to be present in a current affairs magazine, it needs to include a range of current news and stories, but I
will make sure that these news stories will appeal to the target audience of my magazine. My magazine is going to
be published through Dennis publishing, who are the publishers of ‘The Week’ Magazine and ‘The Week junior’, I will
aim to meet in the middle of these two and appeal to an audience older than ‘The Week Juniors’ audience but
younger than the audience of ‘The Week’. I believe that £3 is a reasonable price for the magazine, this is a decent
amount to make profit from the work put in but not too much that young people and students wont be able to afford it.

My first edition, “Graffiti, Art or Vandalism”, will cover the story of the difference between graffiti as an art form or a
form of vandalism, the front cover will feature a picture of graffiti that I have photographed from Anglia Square,
Norwich. Within the magazine I will cover the main cover story while also showing some of the opinions from the
audience from a poll we had on the website. The colour scheme will be bright and vibrant colours to match the art
style of the graffiti, but will also stick to the colour scheme of the branding which is blue and white. The contents will
be a mixture of stories to appeal to the different psychographics of the age groups, including politics and news. It will
also have many different intertextual links to the website to help guide the audience there.

My second edition, “An Overdue Awakening”, will be on the BLM movement, representing the black community in
the best way possible, I will challenge the recent negativity surrounding the protesters, claiming they are violent and
ignorant, and I will actually show that they are fighting for what they believe and are in fact just generalized because
of one group of people, which is the exact thing they are trying to fight against. I will show this through a range of
different techniques, I will use a black and white colour scheme, I will use this as a reference to the 60s when
protests were fighting for the same thing, this will show that even since then, not much has changed and there is still
racism present in our society. The topics inside will all be more serious than they would normally be as I believe this
is a subject that needs to be taken very seriously.
CCS438 – Statement of Intent CCS/H409
Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations
On the contents page, I will feature a range of different topics covered inside of the magazine, with a few related to
the main topic of the magazine, I will have a section dedicated to competitions, quizzes, polls, etc, with ‘call to action’
lines that take you to the website, I will have a page that is for an influencer that is related to the main topic of the
magazine and where you can support and follow them.

Product 2
I am not going to treat my website as just a digital version of the magazine, but instead as almost a completely
separate product, as the website can be updated whenever so the news stories will always be up to date. My
website has to still be appealing to the target audience, so the page will be heavily dominated by images and audio-
visual content, this is a great way of engaging with the audience as it gives almost an insider on the story as soon as
they visit the page.

I want my website to be accessible to everyone and easy to use and navigate, I will have a navigation bar at the top
where the user will be able to navigate around this different pages I will have to offer on the website, like the thrasher
magazine website that I researched, there will be a section where you can view the all the front covers and the
contents pages of the previous magazines, you will not be able to see what is in the magazine as this will ruin the
reason to buy the print magazine.

I will have a separate page which is dedicated to the entertainment of the audience, I will give them the chance to
interact with polls, games, questionnaires, etc, this is a great way to engage with your audience as it adds a
personality to your brand rather than looking like a magazine publishing robot, this makes the audience feel like they
can relate to the magazine and makes it a more friendly site for the users to visit, it also gives us a chance to interact
with the audience.

The website will be able to represent many different communities at once as it can be updated frequently, as it is an
ongoing story right now, I will have a section on my home page dedicated to the BLM movement that features the
most recent news in the subject that the audience will be interested in, it will also give you some people who you can
follow who have been part of the protests and movement.

My website will be very simple and will have a lot of whitespace, this is to stop it from looking cramped and
overcrowd resulting in it having a poorer looking design. The home page will great you with a few different images,
varying In sizes, accompanying them will be a caption that is the story for the image and if clicked will take you to a
more in depth description on the story, these images will be updated daily depending on the importance of the new
news.

How do you intend to link your media products to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the
digitally convergent nature of your media production? (approx. 100 word)

I will use multiple techniques in connecting the two products together, for example, there will be use of ‘call to action’
lines in my magazine, for example, on a story there could be ‘find out more on our website’, this is a great way of
moving traffic onto your website. I will also advertise the activities available on the website like our quizzes, our polls,
etc. In terms of getting people from our web page to the magazine, I will make a way of subscribing to the magazine
online so that it is delivered to their house, making it less hassle for them to have to go to the shop to buy it.

Bother products will follow the same style and colour scheme as eachother, making it easy for the audience to make
the link between the two media products, if a story is repeated on the website from the magazine then it will use the
same font for the title as the magazine has.

CCS438 – Statement of Intent CCS/H409

Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations