Mock Exam

How far can aspects of identity be seen to affect the way in which audiences use online media? Discuss, with reference to Zoella and Attitude. [30]

The way in which audiences use online media can be affected by certain aspects online such as an article with an ideology which may cause the audience to start basing their decisions in the real world on this online media product. This is an example of David Gauntlett's theory of identities and how the audience aren't passive and will focus more on an ideology that will appeal to them and how they construct their own identity that. In my answer, I will be looking at how Zoella and Attitude Online affect they way in which their audience see themselves.

Zoella is a mainstream Youtuber and is one of the most popular beauty vloggers on youtube with over 12 million subscribers. Her primary target audience is that of teenage girls, most likely aged between the ages of 10-16, this makes it easy for Zoella, whether she means to or not, to manipulate her audience into doing certain things. For example, on the Zoella website, there is a post about the perfect Picnic, and it is very stereotypically girly and possibly hyppereal. This will affect the audiences identity as the audience is mainly impressionable young girls who may be heavily influenced by Zoella, as she appears very hyperreal and overly friendly in her videos but also on her website. Some audience members may see this blog on her website and think that everything in Zoella's life is perfect.  Due to Zoella appearing to conform to stereotypically female trends, this may cause some of her fans to start viewing their life like that 

Another example one of the ways Zoella appears to affect her audiences with her ideologies is her apartment tour video as she shows off her apartment to be perfect and all tidy. This is another example of Zoella making herself more hyperreal as it just seems to good to be true, her audience may begin to start taking the bits they want out of this video and this could then influence their decisions in the real world as they may feel like they need to have the perfect life Zoella leads whereas this may not be the case as Zoella is just constructing her identity to her audience, which allows the audience to pick up on her positivity and maybe feel safe when watching Zoella as she is always happy and smiling which could make the audience always come back providing her with a steady viewership due to her cutesy identity.    

Attitude Online helps Gay men be comfortable with who they are and make them proud of being Gay. For example, there is an article about Gay man being proud to be homosexual, which may provoke members of the audience to be more comfortable with themselves. This could be seen as a stereotypical way to represent Gay men to the audiences but because it has good connotations of being gay the audiences may feel more proud of who they are and be inspired by what they've seen on the internet. This will affect how the audience of Attitude magazine chooses to use online media as they will now feel more proud of who they are and not feel like they have to hide their sexuality anymore.

Another way in which Attitude Online constructs an identity on their website is featured in an article about weight loss and muscle gain. This could be seen as very stereotypical as this could be suggesting that all Gay men are Vain and love the look of themselves. This could be seen as quite a negative view from the audiences perspective as this may make them feel trapped into coming out as they may feel like all people will see them as vain so they may not post pictures of themselves on social media as they don't want to have that constant fear of someone judging them on vanity so this article could cause the audience to interact with the social media in a negative and paranoid way. This could also have a negative impact on their identities as Gay men.

Sorry if this doesn't answer the question, i got confused about what i was writing.