Magazine Media 2019 Abstracts
From Puck to Charlie Hebdo: Magazines as Sites of Satire, Parody, and Political Resistance • Kevin Lerner, Marist College • While satire magazines often exist on the fringes of culture, they have a long tradition and illustrate the ways in which the magazine form allows for formal experimentation and a critique of power that would not be acceptable in the bounds of daily journalism. This chapter offers a historical and sociological overview of satirical magazines, arguing that their broader mission includes criticism not only of political power, but also of media power. Magazines provided a perfect vehicle for such discourse against discourse in that, unlike books, they were created originally as collections of materials. Readers of magazines are forced to become critical consumers as they turn from page to page, encountering modes of discourse often antithetical to each other, and some, such as cartoons, that are non-discursive. Satirical magazines and their critical take on institutions and authority also maintain a particularly strong place in the maintenance of freedom of expression—both in open and in repressive societies.
Breasts and bodies: A content analysis of women’s representation in contemporary images • Goodman J. Robyn, University of Florida; Lincoln Lu, University of Florida • Women continue to experience great normative pressures to conform their appearances to an impossible ideal. These pressures come from many sources, from popular media, to peer groups, and even romantic partners. What shapes and sizes of bodies are being normalized in popular contemporary media plays a pivotal role in these normative pressures. This content analysis examines body and breast size norms in the most popular magazines and social media images.
Uncover the magic of visual contrast in print advertisements • Sung Eun Park, The University of Southern Indiana • A common tactic used by advertisers in weight-loss product ads is to use before/after photos showing significant weight loss by a model. In this study, the impact of visual complexity and visual contrast on audience’s evaluation of an advertised weight-loss product has been examined. The result suggests that attitude toward the product, risk perception, and purchase intention are highly influenced by the interaction of visual complexity and visual contrast. More specifically, the impact of before/after photo is different on past users of dietary supplements in comparison to non-users. In particular, users’ body image perception and satisfaction with the dietary supplements they used before influence the way before/after photos work. Non-users of dietary supplements who are in the market for weight-loss products might find an ad featuring before/after photos more appealing and are more likely to buy the product.
Picturing the President: Visual analysis of the Donald Trump presidency on U.S. magazine covers between 2016 and 2018 • Newly Paul, University of North Texas; Gregory Perreault • This paper uses framing theory and visual discourse analysis to examine the representations of Donald Trump on three popular magazine covers, The New Yorker, TIME, and Newsweek, from 2016 to 2018. A total of 74 photographs and illustrations were examined for aspects such as facial expressions, background, use of color, lighting, and presence of symbols associated with the office of the president. Our findings indicate that the covers showed Trump as incompetent, destructive, corrupt, and unconcerned about the American people.
Women of Color, Delegitimization, and Exotic Sexualization on Rolling Stone Magazine Covers • Ashley Walter, Penn State University • Research has shown that women of color are featured significantly less on magazine covers in comparison to white men and women. This paper argues that women of color are also underrepresented on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine, and when shown, are sexualized differently in comparison to white women. Women of color early in Rolling Stone’s history were often un(der)credited, whereas in later issues they are often hypersexualized and exoticized. While also sexualized, white women’s sexuality is often portrayed as playful.
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