Critical Research

For my critical research i have came to a decision that I will be doing a critical research study surrounding the issue of 'Children and the Media'. I am mostly interested in finding out the answer and reasons to why teenage mums are presented so negatively within the media. However there is a likely chance that I might choose to look into the issue of how violence is blamed on teenage mums through poor upbringing. I am planning to evaluate the different stereotypes of teenage mums that are being portrayed through the media and how most teenage mum are blamed for the society not functioning right due to the poor upbringing of the next generation. I want to look into documentaries and focus on how the teenage mums challenge their stereotype or do they simply tend to comply with it.

Defeat Your Myspace ADDICTION

This Is How You Do It...
Admit you have a problem. This may be hard, but accepting that MySpace has taken over your life is an important step into overcoming your addiction. If you simply can't resist the urge to check your home page, then it's clear that MySpace is controlling you and not the other way around.
Stop communicating with people through MySpace and correspond with only those you know, as fellow addicts only contribute to your problem. If you don't want to cut them off completely, consider just taking the friendships that you value off of MySpace. Get their phone numbers, email addresses, AIM screen names, ICQ numbers, or any other information that may be a way of contacting them outside of MySpace.
Print out your page. You've probably personalized it and tweaked it to reflect your personality. In a way, it's a work of art that you created. You don't want it to be lost forever, so save a copy in print. Having a hard copy will make it easier to let go of your profile online.
Start deleting all of the images, comment boxes, background settings, songs, videos, and anything else you put on the page that didn't come with it. Make it into a plain MySpace profile, like it was when you started it. End all blog subscriptions that you have signed up for. Turn off all email notifications.
Post several bulletins announcing that you will be no longer available on MySpace. Delete your main pictures, blog, comments, friends, etc. If your profile is set to private, set it back to normal. Reset the information about yourself.
Change the headline to "No Longer Available" or some other indicator that you no longer use MySpace. Stop using MySpace. Get an e-mail filter and set it to block MySpace, Facebook, or any other similar sites.
Find other creative activities to do. Try to find activities that both amuse you in the short-term and benefit you in the long-term. MySpace only provides a short-term pleasure (usually). Keep in contact with your friends through phone, e-mail, or messenger! Not talking to them may make you want to return to MySpace. After waiting a good month and re-establishing your life, go back and delete your MySpace. It shouldn't, at this point, rip your heart out to do so. Never go back to MySpace, as it will possibly trigger a relapse into the addiction again.
Take a cold shower. And find a relaxing thing to do, eg. take a nap
Return to your wonderful life of impelling arcane and affinity.



TIPS
People who hardly know you may not want to give you personal information and may feel uncomfortable interacting with you outside of MySpace.
Find other activities to do with your time. Learn to program, write a book, etc.
If MySpace is your homepage, change it to another informational homepage such as Google, wikiHow, Yahoo, etc.
If your real-life friends and family members use MySpace, inform them that you're trying to stay away from it, and ask that they don't sign on when you're around.
It may be really hard to keep in touch with some people, especially if they are MySpace addicts. If you want to talk to them outside of MySpace, but they don't sign onto AIM or you feel awkward calling them, you may want to try weaning them off MySpace as well. Remember, real friends don't let friends be MySpace addicts.
If you're like most people, MySpace will lose its appeal after a few weeks of steady or perhaps heavy use. Eventually the grandness will fade away and you will get sick of playing the waiting game for your friends to respond to your over-simplistic comments or messages. If you're like me, nothing beats simply picking up the phone and calling your friends to see how they're doing. Eventually, not only will you have no interests in signing on to MySpace, you will have no need to.
Change your password by closing your eyes and randomly typing. This may require you to copy and paste to confirm your new password. Just be diligent in not peeking or writing this down.
Think about all the time you wasted on MySpace and how it could have been spent wisely elsewhere.
One alternative method is to use a less addictive social networking site, such as xanga or livejournal, and posting there, but not actively seeking out friends.
Another alternative is to just cancel/delete your current myspace account.

The BIG Success With Myspace

In little more than a couple of years MySpace.com has gone from zero to being a top five website which no self-respecting US teenager can ignore. Now, it's gaining ground in Britain.

As any creative thinker knows the best ideas are always the most obvious. The rise of MySpace.com from nowhere to almost the top of the internet tree in just 36 months does nothing to change that maxim.

MySpace is simplicity itself - a site that enables anyone to build their own homepage for free, listing their likes, dislikes, favourite bands, top books, best movies, general interests, relationship status etc, and then hook-up with other like-minded folk.

As 25-year-old Briana Dougherty, a MySpace devotee, puts it, "it's a casual way to stay in contact without appearing weird".

When Briana, who works in the music industry, hits the town, goes to a gig or a party and meets someone interesting, they trade MySpace profiles and stay in contact.



It's a central meeting point to stay in contact with friends all the time
MySpace user Briana Dougherty
Asking for someone's e-mail address can be "creepy", says Briana, who is from California and works in London, because it's "personal, one-to-one contact".

She has 224 "friends" on MySpace. Some are good friends from back home in the US, some are just people "you occasionally see around parties" and some are not actually individuals, but bands she likes.

Music, always a lively topic of conversation among the young, is a great common denominator on MySpace, and fertile ground for emerging bands - the Arctic Monkeys' owe much of their success to the site.

These days the time-honoured teenage conversational gambit "What music are you into?" will likely be met with a response along the lines of "Can I refer you to my MySpace page."

MySpace is what's known as a social networking site. It's by far the biggest, claiming about 57 million registered users, and is currently ranked the fifth most popular English language site on the net by the Alexa ratings service. Others of the same genre include Facebook, Bebo, MSN Spaces, Friendster and Yahoo 360.


The new man behind MySpace - media mogul Rupert Murdoch
All work in a similar way, offering users a host of conventional internet functions - blogging, user forums, instant messaging, personal profiles, online photo albums, visitor comment spaces - in one place.

See someone who's into the same music as you, similar films, is a compatible star sign, or you just fancy? Send them a message and if they're interested, bingo, you've made a friend. Although MySpace wouldn't confirm its UK audience, it has been cited at between two and four million. The launch of a UK-specific site is thought to be imminent.

The success of MySpace has not gone unnoticed by commercial operators who have seized on it as a handy way of targeting potential customers. For example, anyone who proclaims their interest in kite-surfing, should steel themselves for a torrent of e-mails from companies trying to sell them the latest kit.

And with millions of users, social networking sites, which make money out of advertising, are potential goldmines. MySpace was bought last year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m (£332.85m).

But while Mr Murdoch, 75 this week, is clearly hip to the appeal of MySpace, many people even half his age will never have heard of it.


DANGERS OF NETWORKING SITES

The safety of people, particularly children and women, using MySpace is a growing concern
Rachel O'Connell, who leads the Home Office taskforce on internet safety, is anxious that pages are so easily searchable
Displaying photos of oneself helps stalkers, she says
MySpace's Chris DeWolfe says 'This isn't a MySpace issue, it's an internet issue'
"The appeal of these sites lies in the crucial part of the adolescent socialisation process which we all go through... finding your identity, voice, place and status - the tribe with which you most identify," says Jo Twist, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The ideas behind these sites are not new, says Dr Twist, but what is characterising the trend now is the "ease with which people can upload and share their own 'digital assets' - motifs that say something about who they are."

Some parents will doubtless gaze at their offspring busily cultivating friendships online - rather than in the real world - with an air of despair. But, says Dr Twist, it can be hard for them to understand because "many of us have our social networks in place".

The ease with which relationships can be forged online is changing the nature of friendship too. After all, how common is it to have upwards of 200 friends?

MySpace user Stella Sims, 26, sees a clear, but unspoken, competitive streak among users.

"It's a place to show off your personality and how many friends you have. It's a bit of statement of how popular you are," says Stella.


The site is said to have 57 million registered users
Any philosopher or psychologist will tell you that close friendships with more half-a-dozen people is not possible, says Mark Vernon, author of the Philosophy of Friendship.

MySpace friendships are more akin to "audience reach... like Richard and Judy" than traditional social reach.

"Friendship takes time to develop. The person who says they have hundreds of friends wants our compassion not our envy. The heart of friendship is wanting to know someone and be known by them. This is not the same as knowing about someone which is what you get if you never meet your online pal face to face."

Some will find the idea of setting out one's personal life to a potential audience of millions perplexing. Yet MySpace users show little sign of being intimidated by their extensive friendship networks, or indeed by the inevitable threat posed by dishonest, even predatory, users.

Despite a spate of paedophiles and stalkers targeting the site - two men were charged in the US on Tuesday with assaulting girls they met on MySpace - most users simply ignore unwanted communications, according to a recent academic study in the US.

Perhaps the biggest headache anyone with a couple of hundred mates needs to get their head around is how to manage their Christmas card list.

Social Networking

While the influence of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace on firms’ sales and marketing initiatives continues to grow, some experts predict that their impact will soon be dwarfed by that of another Web 2.0 technology - ­ virtual worlds.

Online virtual worlds geared towards entertainment are commonplace nowadays, the
best known being Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, MindArk’s Entropia Universe and Linden Labs Second Life. Users are immersed in an online three-dimensional interactive environment where their characters ­ - usually known as avatars ­ - can get up to just about anything. The fact that life in these virtual worlds often revolves around money, which in some cases can be converted to and from real currency in the physical world, is obviously enticing to businesses.

Ways in which enterprises might use virtual worlds for everyday business range from setting up a virtual meeting place to aid employee collaboration, to a business-to-consumer model where firms maintain a virtual store selling items that are delivered in the real world.

Quocirca principal analyst Fran Howarth is a firm believer in the promise that virtual worlds hold for enterprises. “These worlds have huge potential in terms of the ability to build brand awareness and do PR in the web site’s community and, in some cases, to sell or advertise products to potential customers,” she said.

Topics under discussion at the recent Virtual Worlds 2008 conference in New York reflected the growing interest enterprises are showing in virtual worlds. For example, the theme of one of the best-attended sessions was the need for virtual world developers to focus more on promoting the business benefits of their technology.

Gartner fellow and vice president Steve Prentice believes the past six months have seen a surge in interest from enterprises wishing to explore the potential of
virtual environments.

However, Prentice added that companies are wary of various complications, such as identity management, and reliability and scalability issues that have plagued public virtual worlds such as Second Life. There is also the risk of brand damage if anything should go awry, as well as the ever-present security issues.

One of the major worries is the risk of security flaws that might expose business-critical information. These are not restricted to virtual worlds, of course, but apply to many other publicly accessible social network sites.

“Having employees access a public service such as Second Life, which is out of their control, is not very attractive to enterprises,” Prentice explained.

Quocirca’s Howarth said that enterprises were also worried about the drain on productivity that might be caused by employees spending too much time at work immersed in these sites.

“There is a range of security issues. For example, users placing too much personal information online that could be compromised, or even giving away corporate information, such as email addresses, or chatting about sensitive corporate issues,” Howarth said.

Corporations allowing employees access to these sites “must educate users and put policies in place as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, as well as ensuring that those policies are enforced through technology, such as content filtering technologies,”she added.

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing for Web 2.0 security specialist WorkLight, said most enterprises are likely to remain wary of virtual worlds for some time to come.

“I think companies have a problem about adopting things that they don’t necessarily buy or deploy or fully control. It’s a cultural change, and it’s been brought on by things like Google Apps, Salesforce.com and SaaS products,” Lavenda said.

However, Web 2.0 advances have a habit of riding roughshod over such pragmatic concerns about issues such as control. To illustrate this point, Lavenda recalled a recent security forum his firm held in London, where a chief finance officer from a large bank commented, “We don’t allow employees to use Facebook at work, but I don’t want to be the guy holding his finger in the dam, because at some point this is going to overtake us. We have to find a way to allow people to use these tools, because they are going to find a way to use it whether we block it or not.”

One of the more prominent announcements at the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference was the partnership between IBM and Linden Labs, creator of Second Life, who demonstrated how some portions of the virtual environment could be hosted behind a firewall on IBM blade servers. This arrangement has the potential to allay some control and security concerns.

Anyone looking to incorporate virtual world technology into their business strategy should tread cautiously, according to Prentice. “I am firmly of the belief that virtual worlds are a great technology for enterprises, but my attitude is that initially they ought to consider it as an internal tool, before they start worrying about opening it up to the external world,” he said.

As an example, IBM plans to pilot its solution internally, allowing its employees to explore the main Second Life environment and cross the firewall into IBM’s custom-built world without having to log on and off.

An alternative, according to Prentice, is for businesses to create their own small-scale virtual worlds, instead of joining a large-scale public one.

“This could be something like Sun’s Project Wonderland, which is a Java-based set of engines and technology to allow you to build what I would describe as an avatar-enabled collaboration environment,” he said, adding that all firms really needed to get started is a few virtual conference rooms and perhaps a presentation theatre.

Enterprises, however, need to install a system that can be relied on, which IBM could offer. “There’s no doubt that IBM can deliver a stable, 24x7 platform, that is scalable and keeps running ­ that’s their bread and butter,” Prentice said.

Magazine Design Tips

First-time publishers will, through inexperience, make a few technical mistakes building their magazine. Many magazines come through MagazinePublisher.com, some look great, others, lets say... could use some help. The following tips for magazine design can make your magazine a real "page turner."

Get Inspiration
Before you start your magazine, go to a newsstand and purchase a few magazines that catch your eye. Take them home and try to decide WHY they caught your eye. What is it?... the photos? the layout? the subject of the magazine? Use elements you like in other magazines to inspire your magazine's layout. And do your best to not let the computer dictate your layout. The software works for you not the other way around.

Use a Great Masthead
The masthead is your magazine's logo. It is most often located at the top of the cover and should be the first thing your reader sees. It must be legible and tell people about your magazine. You have looked at your magazine thousands of times but your readers have not. If the masthead is developed with illegible fonts, people won't view it as you intended.
If your magazine is on the newsstands, there are other considerations of which you need to be mindful. Unless your magazine is on the front row, readers will see only the top 2" of your magazine. Does that area in your design lock in the reader's attention? Try testing your magazine by printing out the cover and putting another magazine in front with the top 2" showing. Now take a look from across the room. This is how future purchasers will be seeing it.

Remember, your cover design will be fighting the other covers for attention. A well-designed masthead visually entices the buyer to choose one magazine over others in its category.

Use a Great Cover Photo

DON'T try to save a few bucks on the cover. A well-designed cover can get your magazine noticed and even more importantly, picked up! Therefore, all cover photos must be of a good, high quality photo (in the proper resolution).
Choose a photo that is interesting to your potential readers or which tells a story. Showing the unexcited face of an unknown person will not do much to get the potential customer to reach for your magazine. Choose a photo that is recognizable to your target readers or shows action, unusual colors, taken from unusual angles, or combinations of all these.

Remember, your magazine only gets one chance to make its first impression. Photos are powerful in making a good first impression.

Multi-column Layouts

One trick for having your stories look professionally built is to use a multi-column grid to the page. For regular sized magazines try using three columns, digest sized mags use two. Not only does it look more professional but text will flow better on the page and you will have more options for placing photos.
Don't Be Afraid of "White Space"

Although it can be difficult, consider leaving some areas of the page blank. Stuffing as much as you can onto a page is visually overwhelming to the reader. Experiment with leaving some column white space in your new multi-column layout. Try running text in one of the columns only with a photo or graph covering the other two columns. Try starting your article halfway down the page with the top half being reserved for a photo. Experiment - computers make that easy.
Stay Away from the Edge

Many magazines that come through our facilities have layouts with text too close to the edge of the page. Again, don't try to fill up the entire space. 1/4" margin is the minimum suggestion but better 1/2" or even more, page margin is suggested. Again, it looks more professional adding more white space and you will not worry about the possibility that text might be cut off when the magazine is cut down to size after printing.
Avoid Clip Art

Market research has shown that cartoons do not sell to adults. In this case you are selling the story to the reader. He has not read the story and is deciding whether to or not based on the graphics. If hokey, cheap clip art is used there is a good chance he will not read the article.
Of course if your article deals with child-related subjects then clip art MAY be acceptable.

Remember...It's Only a Magazine
You have invested a great deal of time, creative energy and perhaps money in your magazine. Because of this, you will be dismayed to have your work judged harshly BUT it still won't be perfect when your time deadline comes around. Keep in mind - you may be the only one that ever notices minor imperfections. You don't hyper-analyze other peoples' magazines - your readers won't hyper-analyze yours! It is only a magazine...not a work of art.
Other Magazine Tips

Below are a few other tips that will make your magazine a little more successful. Don't Forget Contact Info
Now that you have a reader you of course would like them to be a long-term reader. We see many magazines come in that forget to tell readers how to subscribe. Your contents page is a good place to list the following info:
your physical address
your web and email address
subscription price
how to subscribe

Introducing the New Kid on the Block

Chelsea Moody isn’t your average teenager or your average publisher. At 17 years old, Chelsea started her first publication, Etc. Art & Surf Magazine in January of 2007. In only a few months, she’s made waves in magazine publishing, no pun intended. She’s an inspiration for anyone starting – or anyone who already has – a publication. With her second issue out on April 4th, Chelsea’s proved that hard work and belief in your publication is the key to success.

Chelsea recently talked with MagazineLaunch.com about her experiences starting a new magazine, handling the growth after the first issue, and her grassroots marketing techniques. She also designed the entire publication.

How did you come up with Etc. Art & Surfing Magazine?
I started the magazine because I am constantly around the surf scene, since I live in Virginia Beach, and love the surf industry. I love the surf contests, and the magazines and everything to do with it. In Virginia Beach, it seems that art and surf fit hand in hand and that this idea, for an art & surf magazine, was totally overdue. I just started the magazine and I love it!

What made you want to enter the publishing world?
I love graphic design. I knew that what I wanted to do was magazine layout, but had got rejected (for info on internships) by many magazines in the field. I sat down and thought about it and wanted to make a magazine that fit, but was not limited to, Virginia Beach. A lot of people may think print is dead, but for me, there is nothing compared to having a hard copy in your hand.

How has the Internet helped you with your publishing venture?
The Internet hasn't really done that much for me simply because it is a free publication and our website is not set up for ordering. It has been a great tool for networking and easier for more people to send in submissions. It has let more people know about the magazine, but hasn't got them that hard copy that I talked about before.

What kinds of marketing and advertising have you done to promote your magazine?
I have stickers all around Virginia Beach and try to make it out to all the contests and events. I sent some to the surf expo and give them to all the surf brand reps to take whenever they are traveling. I had a surf contest back in November to kick off the whole idea of the magazine and am planning to do a little surf series in the summer.

How are you managing your circulation and distribution?
I send them out with anyone and everyone who travels up and down the east coast. I do most of the distribution myself... It's fun going to drop them off everywhere because you get to see people's reaction and how much they like the magazine. Every time I go into a shop the workers are always like "Is this the next issue? We are ready for it!" I am hoping to print 2,000 more copies with every issue and cannot wait to expand!

What tips can you give others on getting their first issue produced?
Network, network, network! Any and every tip someone gives you - write it down. It will all add up and help you in the long run. And just love what you do. It’s so cliché, but so true. If you love publishing this magazine, you will never give up and that's what's important.

Top 20 Teen Magazines

1. Teen
2. Cosmo Girl
3. Seventeen
4. Girl's Life Magazine
5. Teen People
6. YM
7. Elle Girl
8. J-14
9. Teen Voices
10. What!
11. Boy Crazy
12. Alloygirl
13. Adorable Magazine
14. Dazed & Confused
15. American Cheerleader
16. Guideposts Sweet 16
17. American Girl
18. Filles d'aujourd'hui
19. Dolly
20. Ragazza