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 is a left-wing magazine, with an audience built primarily of people with left-wing ideologies. It discusses global issues, as well as events occurring in the UK itself. Its audience primary audience is likely to be middle class, middle aged, and university educated.

In correspondence with reception theory, the preferred reading of this cover would likely be for their left-wing audience to agree with the points made, and an oppositional reading probably coming from a right-wing audience who disagree and/or don’t by the magazine. The negotiated reading could be from a centrist standpoint who neither agree, nor disagree. This presents the different social and political views in western society and could also be taking note of how their audience are from a different culture, so may view this event in different ways. Furthermore, the discussion of global issues also offers a knowledge of how different cultures and societies will have different political standards to those displayed in the UK, and largely in the West also. This could also be presented as an alternative negotiated reading as it would enable those of different political and cultural viewpoints to form some kind of centred agreement around the issues raised in the cover of the article.

This cover also features two news values, being an elite person and an elite country, however, it is displaying a negative image of said elite person. The cover questions his suitability to hold such a political position of power in the USA and raises concern to the audience of whether he should be in power, which would be a prominent question in the minds of the primary target audience, as Donald Trump is a figure of right-wing politics. Furthermore, the use of ‘worst’ being in bold on the front cover could hint at potential future problems for the country. As well as this, the danger of this right-wing politician is highlighted through the imagery of a man running away from the white house, with a negative and almost comical caricature of Trump. The small image of Putin on a bald eagle illustrates the influence he has on Trump and American politics, and also reinforces the ideology of society being patriarchal, as women are often vastly underrepresented in politics, if represented at all. This links to binary opposition, and could be viewed as the world against trump, or left-wing against right-wing.

Furthermore, both the primary and secondary target audience are likely to know of Carl Bernstein and how he had been involved with American politics through the Watergate scandal. This reinforces the notion that the audience would be both knowledgeable and informed on such topics, and that they are educated on other social, and cultural events that have occurred previously, and are still occurring. This also improved the likelihood of the magazine receiving the preferred reading from their audience and enables them to continue creating articles on various political events that are happening in society within both the UK and the world. It also ensures that they can keep an expansive audience of both those with western political ideology, and those from other cultures who share similar views, even if they may differ slightly to those of a primarily western audience.

In conclusion, magazine covers represent various social, cultural, and political events through presenting the events in ways that would appeal to their intended audience, and gain a positive, and preferred reading of such events.