Exam Question - Magazine Industry

Component 2 Section B (either two 15 markers or one 30 marker)

How exactly is the magazine industry regulated? [15]

Who regulates magazines? 
IPSO (independent press standards organisation)
Both magazines and newspapers
A self regulatory body for press standards
Hold newspapers, magazines and journalists to account for their own actions to maintin freedom of expression for press.
Editors Code of Practice - quite flawed as there are 'exceptions' to the rules that have been laid out.
Before this, press was regulated by the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) 1990-2014 closed due to phone hacking scandal of Millie Dowler murder.
1953 - General Council of the Press, voluntary regulation, didn't have much power.

Livingstone and Lunt 
- regulation being at risk due to increasing power of global media corporations and rise in development of technology
- adbusters uses graphic and violent lexis and imagery that could be harmful to certain audiences eg 'save the planet kill yourself' article, louboutin advert.


What economic factors have affected this product? How financially successful was it? Was it made commercially or not for profit? [15]

Woman
Owned by IPC media, a conglomerated horizontally integrated media company
Hugely successful of it's time, due to successful target audience, working class domestic house wives, affordable magazine, etc. 
30% revenue comes from advertising.
Mass market basic audience, capitalist advertisements, pro-consumerist

Adbusters
Owned by Adbusters Media Foundation - self-owned
No outside influence for their production
Socially diverse, not for profit, aggressively anti-advertisement
£10.99 per copy?! /120,000 readership / released 6 times a year (bimonthly)

Curran and Seaton
- media is controlled by a small number of corporations driven by profit and power, limiting creativity , creativity and quality
- Woman conforms to this theory, being produced by a large conglomeration IPC, driven by profit, owning a huge number of magazines.
- Adbusters subverts this theory, due to having ideologies around anti-consumerism, anti-capitalism, and self-ownership, through attacking advertisement and lack of recognisable conventions.