timed essay question 3

 

Explain how magazine front covers represent social, cultural and political events. Refer to Source A to support your points.

the Big Issue has a primary audience of male and female, middle-class, middle-aged, well educated people who have left-wing views. This tells us that their coverage of stories in their magazine are going to center around a left-wing view. 

For example, on the cover of The Big Issue's magazine featuring the story on Donald Trump the audiences eyes are drawn towards this characture, style version of Donald Trump, which mocks his place of power, being the president of the United States. This initial look into how The Big Issue presents their political stories, and it also links to reception theory as their primary target audience will agree with what is featured on the cover as they hold the same political views as the magazine, whereas id a person with a right-wing view saw this cover they would have an oppositional reading of this cover. The images of people in power on the cover are almost presented to be mocked as also seen on the cover is the White House and a man running out of there which could foreshadow the danger that Donald Trump has created.

This imagery on the cover, link to the idea of Paitrical society as all of the people on this cover are people in power, but they're all men and are wearing suits, this idea reinforces the stereotypes between men and women, and what jobs they do. For example, by the men on the cover al being in a position of power they're seen as strong and presentable. However this ideal is then contrasted by the text on the cover reading 'What's the worst that could happen?' implying that by Donald Trump being in power will lead to many problems. The Big Issue has presented these political events as a mess which is shown by them placing the edited image of Trump next to the globe which hints at the amount of power he has as president. There is then an image at the top of the cover which shows, President Putin riding on an eagle, which is a well-known American symbol, which suggests to the audience that there may be growing tension between these two countries and their leaders. This large amount of imagery on the cover already gives the audience some sort of idea about what political issue is mentioned in the featured story for this issue.

In smaller text under the large print the audience is told that this featured story is written by Carl Bernstein, which The Big Issue's audience would most likely know and recognize because they're well-educated and they would know that Carl Bernstein, is a well known American reporter who has focused his stories around American politics. The Big Issue's focus isn't just on the main political story, at the bottom of the cover there is a list of other stories that are in the magazine too, which further links to their target audience. These stories include, bird-watching, which would most likely appeal to the older group of their target audience. As well as a story about the famous Olympic diver, Tom Daley, which helps the magazine to relate to social and cultural issues rather than base their whole magazine issue on the political problems. 

Overall, i feel that magazine cover represent the political issues the most as they will be the most talked about issues at the time, therefore a larger audience will wan to buy their magazine. However each magazine will present these issues differently depending on their target audience and their political views. These political stories will also been the main focus of attention as the events may be happening where their audience is, or their audience would want to educate themselves further on issues happening around the world.