Habermas and the transformation of the public sphere. At first people use to speak in coffee shops to each other but during the late 1700s people started to print and use media which changed how people thought and interacted

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to discuss and create connections with each other under the government.

free press is a book or media not controlled, restricted or censored by the government in political or ideological matters

“it does not imply that the media are obliged to confirm to popular will or carry out some particular mission” “public control of media has often been advocated on the grounds of public interest”

public control vs deregulation – concept of public interest.

1. Media Ownership—The endgame of all mass media orgs is profit. “It is in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit.”

2. Advertising—Media costs more than consumers will pay: Advertisers fill the gap. What do advertisers pay for? Access to audiences. “It isn’t just that the media is selling you a product. They’re also selling advertisers a product: you.”

3. Media Elite—“Journalism cannot be a check on power, because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, and big institutions know how to influence the media. They feed it scoops and interviews with supposed experts. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins…. You won’t be getting in. You’ll have lost your access.”

4. Flack—“When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flack machine in action: discrediting sources, trashing stories, and diverting the conversation.”

5. The Common Enemy—“To manufacture consent, you need an enemy, a target: Communism, terrorists, immigrants… a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion.”

Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of the big issues by the news media.

frame – how something is presented using the media

What is the network effect (Theodore Vail)? Network Effects describes the phenomenon how the value of a good or service increases as more people start to use that good or service.

What is ‘loop theory’? (Norbert Wiener) Using data to predict what is going to happen next

What is the Dunbar number? (Robin Dunbar) Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/fans-think-mac-miller-posthumous-album-circles-features-ariana-grande

• a relatively radical voice – I wouldn’t say so with my example, because it is pretty typical / reactionary ie young people tatoos, in a club, doing nothing worthwhile
• construction of a young female identity. again very reactionary, showing subservience to males, overtly sexual, lots of pink, make-up very stereotypical
• interested in more superficial issues – yes definitely agree that it is superficial because its not focusing on the real issues like the austrailian bush fires which is a major issue killing many animals and some people however they only made one post on it.

• A   Cultivation Theory examines the long term effects of television.
• B   Vertical integration is where a media company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution.​
• C   A conglomerate is a large company which own a lot of smaller companies.
• D   Synergy is where two or more media organisations work to produce a combined effect greater than what could be achieved on their own.​

In this essay I will show both the radical interpretation of women in the video game tomb raider and reactionary stereotype of men shown in the Men’s Health magazine. I will be exploring the issue of sexualisation used by Eidos in the character creation and gameplay of Tomb Raider, furthermore explaining how the game can be seen as radical. Additionally, I will explore the misrepresentation of men and the stereotype of being unfeeling and having to “blast body fat” or to have “t-shirt arms”. 

In Men’s Health it uses Vin Diesel as an iconic sign, it’s that were all a meant to have muscles like him. This magazine cover makes out that it’s easy to lose weight “lose 8kg fast” and it expects all men to have lots of muscles “build a 6-pack for life”. This is a reactionary text and agrees with the stereotype that all men should be strong and emotionless as we can learn to “slay winter blues”. However, statistically suicide is more common with men and this could be partly due to fact men can be seen as weak by sharing their feelings. 

Tomb Raider can be seen as radical as it has a female character holding a gun, this is a symbolic sign linked to violence. This is radical because it’s a counterstereotype, women are seen as caring or calm. It’s normally men that enjoy violence or pictured to be aggressive. An iconic sign on the game cover is Lara and how she’s a meant to be attractive and skinny, this is reactionary as stereotypical women are pretty and skinny. On the cover she is also wearing short shorts and a crop top, this is used to sexualise and objectify her to make the game cover more appealing to men which is the games target audience. 

The audience for the Men’s Health magazine are men who want to lose weight or feel like they need to exercise or workout to look like a stereotypical man accepted by society. The uses and gratification theory developed by Bulmer and Katz states that users seek out media sources which best fulfils their needs and assumes people choose certain media for five different reasons, these are: Information and education, entertainment, personal identity integration and social interaction and escapism. Men’s Health could fall into both Information and personal identity as readers may want to learn how to lose weight or to be inspired by others. 

However, Tomb Raider falls into the entertainment section for both its sexualisation of Lara to increase the games attraction for men/ target audience and for its gameplay. 

In conclusion, both covers are reactionary as they give society an unrealistic representation of how men and women should look. In Tomb Raider, Lara is extremely sexualised and used as a way to create appeal for the game this can make people set goals to look like something can’t be. Men’s Health also causes men to set extreme targets of how they want to look and can cause low esteem of people who can’t reach these targets. Both CSPs are negative stereotypes and cause fake dominant ideologies giving people bad constructed realities of themselves. 

Positive and negative stereotypes – a widely held but fixed image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.
Counter-types – a positive stereotype and emphasizes the positive features about a person.
Misrepresentation – the action or offence of giving a false or misleading account of the nature of something.
Selective representation -selective representation is when some groups of people are represented more in government than others.
Dominant ideology – denotes the attitudes, beliefs, values, and morals shared by the majority of the people in a given society.
Constructed reality – the way we present ourselves to other people based on past experiences and how we see ourselves
Hegemony – leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.
Audience positioning – the techniques used by the creator of a text to try to get the audience to understand the ideology of the text.

Fluidity of identity – identity can be changed and is not fixed to a person
Constructed identity –
Negotiated identity – the way in which people reach certain agreements
Collective identity – a sense of belonging to a group or community

The theme of my magazine is predominantly black and white I did this to make the game seem dark or evil. This was based off a rap magazine with Kendrick Lamar. However, some parts of my magazine are red, these are used to create contrast and make certain parts of the magazine stand out. For example, the main focus of my magazine is a game called overtale, therefore I have used bright writing to make it stand out and draw people’s attention.  

The target audience for my magazine was men aged 20+ and mainstreamers. Mainstreamers will buy the magazine as they enjoy using physical copies as they can use them for decoration, collections or to read while using public transport like getting the train or bus to work. 

The definition of upload is the transfer of data from one computer to another. This is my title because using the magazine I am giving information to other people about computers. 

In my magazine I plan to use advanced and instructional langauge to inform readers on certain games without making it to formal or boring. The magazine is aimed at adults therefore I have used a dark theme to create a sense of evilness while not being to child-like or naïve.