Exam Question - Online Media

To what extent do Zoella and Attitude reflect the social and historical context of the time when they were made? [30]

Plan:

Judith butler

Representation

Industry

Online media is the different mediums of traditional media, in an online format. These can include videos, music, magazines etc. These are often either copyrighted or non-copyrighted material, available for free, or at a premium rate. Many companies that exist in the traditional print media format demonstrate synergy and translate their works to online formats. One example of this, which I will be looking at today, is Attitude Magazine / Online. I will be looking specifically at how the YouTube vlogger Zoe Sugg, AKA Zoella and the online magazine Attitude Online reflect the social and historical context of the times that they were made through the lens of the representations, and the industry seen throughout their respective products. Zoella is an incredibly popular fashion / beauty / lifestyle vlogger on the video publishing and streaming site, YouTube. She has around 12 million subscribers at the time of writing, and around 5 million on her secondary channel, MoreZoella. She is the 147th most subscribed channel on the platform, and has been creating vlogs and videos for her audience since 2009. Attitude online is the online division of Attitude magazine, which was originally published in 1994, although was released online in 2014, the same year that gay marriage was legalised. Attitude is owned by 'Stream Publishing', a conglomerate who own many other brands of magazines and other companies from different cultural industries, such as Spar. Attitude online has different sections in which they publish articles based around the following topics: beauty / grooming / lifestyle / travel / fashion / boys / opinion / entertainment. 

Within her videos, Zoella presents the traditional, and hetero-normative sense of relationship with her and her boyfriend, Alfie Deyes. This stems from how she is constructed within her videos, as she features, perhaps unwittingly, a lot of hegemonic and patriarchal ideals. For example, in Zoella's "Christmas Preparation Vlog" she is seen preparing for Christmas day. The way she is represented in this video is quite infantile and childlike, and very feminine and 'girly'. This is due to the way she constructs her own identity. She spends a lot of the video in pink pyjamas, a symbolic code for a childish nature. As well as this, she also participates in wrapping presents and readying the home for Christmas. Through watching this, we can see that Zoella's hegemonic view is presented through her readiness to do housework, something that is traditionally left for women of the house to do. This shows that she may think in quite a hegemonically inspired way, as she conforms to the stereotypes that have been built on upon years and years of constant representation in various forms of media. In doing this, she also perpetuates the cycle for future generations, as many of the people who watch their videos are young girls, and they are quite an aspirational audience. They are drawn in by Zoella's direct mode of address in her vlogs, as well as her personal invitation into quite intimate events, such as the Christmas preparations. She also draws this audience in by using rhetorical questions, the lexis used is very informal and family-friendly, which is relatable to her younger audiences. 

We can make sense of a lot of Zoella's channel through the use of Claude Levi-Strauss' theory of Structuralism. There are many diametrically opposed concepts within Zoella's vlogs, and these are used in order to construct her own, hyperreal representation. One clear and striking answer to this point is the existence of Alfie Deyes in her vlogs. Alfie is everything a stereotypical and traditional man is. This could come through his lack of organisation in the Christmas vlogs, in which he forgets to pack a wash-bag or he leaves his valuables around the house (Which Zoella is all to happy to sort out for him - perhaps even further showing the deep patriarchal hegemony encoded within her videos). Furthermore, Alfie, as well as being diametrically opposed to Zoella, is also opposed in the sense that he is represented in a different way, as more macho and the man who is less focused on homely possessions, and more on going to the gym. As seen in her videos. There is not much of a sense of polysemy within their representations, they are quite two dimensional and it is for this reason that I think they aren't very subversive or challenging, they are not reflecting the current social climate very well, although they do a good job at reflecting different parts of historical values and traditions within their videos. 

Going even further with this, I think that it could be argued that Zoella's representation of herself is entirely constructed and false. This touches upon Jean Baudrillard's Postmodernism theory, and I think that it rings true in this case. Zoella, while still obviously a human, almost becomes autonomous when looking at how she is under the lens of the industry she is in. YouTube, as a site, has recently become more focused on monetary and financial gain, rather than heartfelt and personal content. A lot of this is due in part to the craving of recognition from YouTube's algorithm, a machine set of instructions that decides which viewers see specific videos on their feed. Because of this, a lot of her content has derived from the original meaning that she had, and she started to focus a lot more on essentially beating the algorithm. An example of this is within her video thumbnails, they are all very similar. They feature a flat composition mid shot or close up of Zoella, and a branded item the video is themed around, along with high-key lighting in order to make herself look more attractive and sexualised, calling into question Liesbet Van Zoonen's theory of feminism, almost as if she is selling her own image for views and clicks. I think that this representation could mean that Zoella is essentially a cog in a machine that keeps YouTube turning, and this is interesting because of how the representations of herself in this light effect her audience.

Attitude Online, on the other hand, is primarily focused on a website, although, in a similar vein to Zoella, they have other social media presence, showing their synergy and digital convergence by using sites such as Twitter and Instagram, as well as their mainline magazine and online site in order to maximise their reach and expansion. This is reflective of David Hesmonhalgh's 'Cultural Industries' theory. Attitude, and to a larger extent, Stream Publishing, utilise vertical and horizontal integration in order to maximise both profit and audience by buying out the competition. This can even be seen in Stream Publishing owning the large chain supermarket, Spar, which acts as a vessel to promote the magazine. Surely, with all of this reach, it would make the magazine diverse and on the cutting edge of the gay male and LGBT community? As well as being Europe's best selling 'gay magazine', I think it could be argued that Attitude Online is not very fair within its representations. 

Firstly, I think that the unfairness in representations comes heavily from the symbolic annihilation of different body types, as well as different races. When looking at the website, specifically the 'boys' section, we can see that there is one dominant body type. There are a lot of macho, shirtless and suggestive males, though not all gay. I think that this creates quite a narrow and hetero-normative representation of men, as there is a clear bias for that body type and race, and against POC, and members of the 'Twink' community. Despite the online media pack reading that the primary goals of this magazine is to be subversive and challenging, I think that quite the opposite is true when looking at the actual content of the magazine. I also think that this demonstrates Paul Gilroy's 'Postcolonialism" theory quite well. This theory is about the after-effects of many countries and people after being under a colonial rule, and facing systematic oppression. I think that this is especially prevalent in the UK, Attitude's main target area, as there is hardly any representation of non-white people within the media, and Attitude only serves to perpetuate this. 

Another prime example of how unfair LGBT representation is shown within this magazine is how the males that are featured are often sexualised. This once again calls into question Van Zoonen's theory of feminism, just in a different light to how it is represented within Zoella. The males that are shown within the boys section of the magazine are often seen in close up, and sometimes borderline voyeuristic shots, that suit the hegemonic male gaze of sexualisation and objectification. This is quite strongly shown even in contexts where sexualisation should not really be applicable, such as the article created for Christiano Ronaldo's birthday. There, it featured many different close up photographs of him in tight fitting underwear, with the high-key lighting and mise-en-scene made specifically to draw out his good features and sexualise him. I think that this representation is quite hetero-normative, and frankly, sexist, as he is being upheld as an object for viewing pleasure. 

This is not to say that all of the representation featured within Attitude Online is negative and shallow however. There is, in fact, a lot of textual poaching and repurposing going on within the website that allows the gay community to essentially gain ground and flourish, using words and themes that were once seen as derogatory to their advantage. One example of this could be within the repurposing of the 'Hellraiser' article, and how it has a lot of gay iconography present within the themes of the movie. This demonstrates a clear wide range of representation because a movie that was once seen as a cult classic, gory, bordering BDSM film, has been poached by the gay community, and turned into something that they can identify with and bond with. This shows both David Gauntlett and Henry Jenkins theories of Identity and Fandom, respectively. Many gay people can essentially find both their voices and their identities through picking apart different parts of the movie that suit them, and repurposing these into their daily lives, much like what has happened with this article.

Finally, I think that Attitude does have some really good examples of their representations being used to reflect the social climate, and this comes within the front cover photography of Jake Shears. While still white and hyper-masculine, I think that this is still subversive due to how he is constructed by the dress codes and the mise-en-scene and makeup within the shoot. He is seen wearing fairly heavy makeup, something which is traditionally reserved for women. I think that this, for a start, showcases how he is going against traditional values of masculinity, and this is quite challenging in and of itself. There is a clear sense of androgyny within the shoot, as Shears has quite a dainty posture, posing with his hand on his hip while in a military flight suit, which has been suggestively unzipped. This goes even further to break gender binaries because of how he is being represented in a vastly different way to how males in the 'boys' section of the online site are. 

In conclusion, I think that Zoella generally does not reflect the socio-historical context of the time that she was releasing videos, as she became much more of a hyperreal representation of herself in the process, and promotes quite infantile and narrow hegemonic viewpoints and ideologies of the word she lives in. On the other hand, I think that attitude is generally more diverse within its representations. At its core, it will be inherently challenging and subversive, especially for the time it was released, as back in 2014 a lot of stigma was still attached to being gay, with gay marriage being criminalised until 2014. It is for this reason that I think that the magazine has a lot of subversive articles that bend the stigma and create new ways for people to represent themselves, but it still falls within the same pitfalls as many kind of media, and this is that sometimes the representations are there to satiate carnal desires, and this leads to a lot of unfair and discriminatory representations, although they are generally a lot more mixed.