University Report: Digital Media Principles and Magazine Influence

This report delves into the principles of digital media, specifically examining the evolution and impact of magazines. It begins by defining various types of magazines, including general interest, news, high-class, men's and women's interest, technical, house, literary, religious, film, and children's magazines, while also exploring their organization and circulation. The report then analyzes how magazines influence culture, focusing on their role in shaping perceptions of beauty, fashion trends, and pop culture, drawing on sources that discuss the impact of fashion magazines on glamour, the globalization of beauty standards, and the influence of magazines on body image and consumer culture. The analysis highlights the historical context, the role of magazines in promoting American pop culture, and the potential negative effects of unrealistic portrayals in magazines, such as the promotion of ultra-thin models. The report concludes with a comprehensive overview of the evolution of magazines and their continued impact on society.

Running head: DIGITAL MEDIA PRINCIPLES
Digital Media Principles
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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DIGITAL MEDIA PRINCIPLES
What are the different kinds of magazines and how are they organized?
Summary of the sources:
 Peterson, T. (1956). Magazines in the Twentieth Century. [ebook] The University of
Illinois Press, Urbana. Available at: http://elibrary.bsu.az/books_400/N_305.pdf
[Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].
The article deals with the growth of the magazine and the advertising and its
growth and the effects. The modern national magazine was born in the late nineteenth
century. There had been magazines in America, for almost 150 years before the birth
of the national magazine. The author talks about the birth, growth and the
development of the culture of magazine in the nineteenth century and how it became
so popular as to involve the masses and influencing the target audiences. The
magazine industry had been hospitable to those who were talented and had fresh and
new ideas for publication. However along with this the new publishers began to arrive
in the market and with their arrival, the new magazines reflected the changes in the
lifestyles of the Americans. The new class of magazines started emerging out, which
reflected and portrayed the characteristics of the American culture and the Pop culture
to be specific. This began influencing the young minds of the country. The book deals
with the development of this mass media.
 Dosil, R. (2019). Magazines definitions and brief history. [ebook] Simon Fraser
University, pp.1-7. Available at:
http://tkbr.publishing.sfu.ca/pub602/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2015/10/602HAN.M
agazineHist-Def.pdf [Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].
This article deals with the brief history of magazines and what is the definition
of magazines. He says that in this age of information, the magazines are more often
responsible for connoting information and entertainment and service journalism

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which probably prevails over the entire industry. The article also studies the
development of magazine as a periodical and how gradually it expanded with the
movements to anthologize newsletters, pamphlets and almanacs as well. The
publishers, editors, and writers of the magazines became not merely mediators
between academe and the emergent middle class, but merchants of information and
entertainment. The author here deals with the development and the birth of magazines
in countries like England, America and Canada. Further he talks about the different
forms of magazines which include consumer magazines, trade magazines and
organisation magazines. The organization magazines can further be classified into
society and association, into public relations as well as custom.
Analysis:
Magazines are the publications that are generally issued at regular intervals and are
called periodicals. They are generally issues monthly or weekly and contain articles and
stories, along with photographs, advertisements and news and information. Being an
important source of information, magazines can be classified into different kinds. There are
magazines of general interest which have an allowance of mass circulation and involves a
large number of target audience. According to McKible (2016), the reader’s digest is also one
of the most popular magazine which was successful enough to reach a large number of
people worldwide since it was published in the common language English. Magazines can
also be news magazines. These are the periodicals published fortnightly or weekly. They
contain articles and news on the present situation of the Nation, politics, religion, state,
economic condition, sports, business or industry. High class Magazines are published with a
purpose top reach a particular elite class. It is not for the common masses. These magazines
offer high level of reporting involving emphasis on the literary, the social, the political,
scientific as well as the ethical problems in the society. There are also other magazines which

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are of Men’s interest and women’s interest individually. The men’s magazines concentrate on
the sports news, as well as fashion. There are technical magazines and the House Magazines
or Journals as well. The technical magazines are published for a particular section of the
society which involve the engineers, the people dealing with medicines, as well as gardening.
On the other hand the house journals are for the employees of the companies or different
organizations. The house magazines are published for improving the public relation between
the managers and the employees and for circulating the news of the company within the
employees of the organisation and even outside. Though it is circulated free of cost, it acts as
an advertisement of the company’s values. The Literary magazine is used for the publication
of the literary items such as the stories, poems, it was earlier published for the literary figures,
the writers as well as the poets. In accordance with all these there are religious magazines,
film magazines as well as sports magazines. Religious magazines are meant for the religious
people, which has different news and values of the religions of the world. Film magazines
provide us with the photographs and the information of the entertainment world and the film
industry. According to Bongco (2014), last but not the least, there are also magazines for the
children. Which has different fairy tale stories, children jokes as well as other fun materials.
How does Magazines influence Culture?
Summary of the Sources:
 Black, H. (2012). THE ART OF THE DISTINGUISHED: HOW FASHION
MAGAZINES INFLUENCE THE DEFINITION AND UNDERSTANDING OF
MODERN GLAMOUR. [ebook] TigerPrints. Available at:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a773/e6a34b27530f348ac54f86ab73d0c2ce3bc1.pdf
[Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].

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The concept of glamour is extremely misunderstood in today’s modern world.
According to the author, it is essential to apprehend the concept of pictorial philosophy and
especially the culture that is linked with the idea of fashion and style including the political
power. The article investigates how the fashion magazines are responsible for the
construction of the idea of glamour and fascination influences the understanding of the
readers. The term glamour exists in the modern society within the social spectrum of
sophistication. The article looks after the individual perspectives about the glamour and how
the self-perceived notion and one’s social status influences them to understand the basic
concept of it. There has been the use of four contemporary fashion magazines by the author
in order to draw upon a visual analysis of the fashion world. The article further provides a
commentary on the tools that effect the modern day fashion publications. How the fashion
magazines influence the culture is dealt in this article. He has analysed the topic by taking the
help of John Berger’s understanding of the visual culture, Bourdieu’s model of taste and
distinction and the Baudelaire’s perception of flaneur.
 Yan, Y. and Bissell, K., 2014. The globalization of beauty: How is ideal beauty
influenced by globally published fashion and beauty magazines?. Journal of
Intercultural Communication Research, 43(3), pp.194-214.
The article aims to examine the portrayal of female beauty and glamour worldwide.
Nowadays, the females are getting highly influenced by the top beauty models as well as the
fashion magazines worldwide. Different magazines use different standards to frame stories
regarding the models and the fashion statements. These magazines thus dominate the beauty
standards to a large extent. These are specifically applicable to the North American and the
European magazines. The article also says that the magazines distributed in the Latin
America and South Africa were assimilated into the Western forms of beauty but the Asian
countries were comparatively independent in terms of sexual and physical beauty frames.

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Globalisation has affected the culture on a large extent and the magazines have had an
important role in influencing the culture of the individuals. The growth of the Pop Culture
tends to get the greatest attention because of the magazines and the other form of media
manifests this pop culture all around the world and the other cultures tend to inherit this form
of culture. The article analyses this influence of the American Pop Culture over the
individuals with the help of mass media applications.
Analysis:
Magazines play a very important role in influencing the young minds as well as the
individuals. The most common effect that the magazines have all over the world is that it has
a great impact over the society and the people tend to judge people, body shame them and
this effects the women generally. Magazines promote about dieting and about losing weight.
The late 19th century brought with it the great circulation of the magazines which included a
typical focus on the television, film and entertainment news. According to McRobbie (2014),
these periodicals were very successful in incorporating and promoting the greatest American
pop culture. The teen and the entertainment magazines influenced the popular culture not
only through their reporting on the celebrities but also through their articles that were
published on the celebrity fashion. The readers used to adopt these fashion trends. Since the
target audience for the magazines were the young women. Offering stories and news about
the fashion, makeup, the different form of lifestyles had been very successful on behalf of the
magazines to influence the culture of the then America (Slater and Henry, 2013).
The portrayal of the ultra-thin models in the pages of the magazines distort the
women’s views if beauty and health and this had often lead to depression, extreme dieting
policies and eating disorders. According to a study, by Lanzieri and Cook (2013), almost 69
percent of the women were influenced by the idea of the perfect body shape despite knowing

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the ill effects of these. Coming back to the origin, the magazine indeed have great
contributions to the development of the culture and the popular fashion trends in the modern
world. However it was always not this influential. The magazines used to be extremely costly
and thus could reach the influential people and to the people who were financial stable to
afford the printed publications. However after globalisation, the cost of the magazines just
dropped down and it reached more number of people increasing the revenue of the
advertisements. Thus the magazines could justify the cost of the mass circulation and the
more the publications reached people, more people were influenced by the developing pop
culture of Latin America (Lowenthal, 2017). Thus magazines being a apart of the mass
media, despite being a tremendous source of information, also perform their functions to
bring about massive changes both positive and negative in the field of influence of culture.

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References
Black, H. (2012). THE ART OF THE DISTINGUISHED: HOW FASHION MAGAZINES
INFLUENCE THE DEFINITION AND UNDERSTANDING OF MODERN GLAMOUR.
[ebook] TigerPrints. Available at:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a773/e6a34b27530f348ac54f86ab73d0c2ce3bc1.pdf
[Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].
Bongco, M., 2014. Reading comics: Language, culture, and the concept of the superhero in
comic books. Routledge.
Dosil, R. (2019). Magazines definitions and brief history. [ebook] Simon Fraser University,
pp.1-7. Available at:
http://tkbr.publishing.sfu.ca/pub602/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2015/10/602HAN.Magazine
Hist-Def.pdf [Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].
Lanzieri, N. and Cook, B.J., 2013. Examination of muscularity and body fat depictions in
magazines that target heterosexual and gay men. Body Image, 10(2), pp.251-254.
Lowenthal, L., 2017. Historical perspectives of popular culture. In Literature and Mass
Culture (pp. 17-32). Routledge.
McKible, A., 2016. Little magazines & modernism: new approaches. Routledge.
McRobbie, A., 2014. Young women and consumer culture: An intervention. In Cultural
Studies and Anti-Consumerism(pp. 23-42). Routledge.

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Peterson, T. (1956). Magazines in the Twentieth Century. [ebook] The University of Illinois
Press, Urbana. Available at: http://elibrary.bsu.az/books_400/N_305.pdf [Accessed 12 Aug.
2019].
Slater, M.D. and Henry, K.L., 2013. Prospective influence of music-related media exposure
on adolescent substance-use initiation: A peer group mediation model. Journal of health
communication, 18(3), pp.291-305.
Yan, Y. and Bissell, K., 2014. The globalization of beauty: How is ideal beauty influenced by
globally published fashion and beauty magazines?. Journal of Intercultural Communication
Research, 43(3), pp.194-214.