Podcast Critical Self Reflection

The Red Podcast hosted by me, Narent, and Abizer features a subverted true crime genre convention. The podcast is targeted to audiences aged 14 - 19 because I think that there are elements in the podcast that may be unsuitable for younger audiences or boring for older ones. We have also created a social media page in Instagram in order to advertise and update our audiences about the upcoming releases of our episodes. For the first episode we talked about the school's red note system, and for the second episode we talked about the basketball school team.

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

Stuart Hall suggests that media does not reflect meaning, it creates it. An example of when this happens are stereotypes. Stereotypes are used to represent people in a way that gives them a label. It is used as a result of a lack of diversity in production. For the first episode of the podcast, we talk about the red notes. This is connected to the naughty boys stereotype. The use of another theory called the Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner also comes to light. This is because the media often represents girls as smart and boys as naughty. As a result, people who get exposed to these ideas will be reinforced into supporting it even more. Going back to the podcast, our special guest was a male and he has gotten a lot of red notes which reinforces the stereotype of boys being naughty even more.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Steve Neale's Genre Theory states that it all a matter of repetition and difference. A media text or product has to conform to the genre conventions enough for it to be recognizable but also to subvert it in order to stay interesting. By doing this, we can provide pleasure and meaning for the audience and as a result it will create a brand image for us. After researching the genre convention we wanted to use for our podcast, we decided to use a true crime theme but with a little twist. We subverted the genre convention of true crime and instead of making it serious and cold we tried to make it a little funny and dramatic. However, we still tried to make the cove thumbnails a little bit serious in order to catch our audience's expectation. This also makes it easier for us producers as it basically sets us with an audience ready to target.

How do your products engage with the audience?

We created a social media page in Instagram for our podcast in order to keep the audience updated for our upcoming releases. We did this by always having a teaser trailer be released beforehand. By having a social media page, we are able to build a fandom out of it. There will be prosumers who are willing to share our social media posts to other people which will then spread to even more people. By having a fandom, we can also ask the audience or prosumers to help give suggestions according to what they have in mind. This way, they will be even more satisfied and feel engaged in the production of the media product. Not only this, we can also have fan made art or even invite some of our audiences to come to join the podcast as a special guest.  As a result, they will be involved in the growth of our team and are involved / engaged in the distribution of our media product. 

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

For this podcast I've done research through many different forms of media. I took inspiration of the Buzzfeed Unsolved series in YouTube for the main theme of the podcast. I tried to make the podcast have a serious narrated intro which introduces the audience to the topic of the episode which conforms the genre convention. However, I decided to subvert this and instead of having it be serious I made it overdramatic and funny. I have also gotten lots of inspiration from the video game called Overwatch made by Blizzard Entertainment. This is because in one of the in game events, there is a person with a deep voice narrating the intro of the story with thunder rumbling in the background. I took the thunder idea and implemented it into the intro section of our podcast. Finally for our social media page, I took inspiration from my old social media fan account that I created back in 2019. Basically, the common genre convention of fan page in Instagram is to connect many different posts together. I conformed to this convention by having red and black solid backgrounds connect with the teaser trailer and announcement of the episodes. For the red one, it creates a good effect as it looks like the red paper is being ripped revealing what is behind.