Conventions Analysis - Contents Page

Language: The use of the picture of the american president Barack Obama could have an influence on the audience in terms of making them want to buy the magazine because it makes the magazine look presidential, making the audience want to buy it simply because the president is in it. The way that the pictures are arranged shows that even though the president is in the magazine it may still not be the most "must read" article in the magazine.

Institutions: The Rolling Stone institution is world famous and it will have a lot of money, this means that they could afford to conduct interviews with all the famous people that are featured in the magazine and the can even afford to do this presidential article. The institution is so popular it talks about the U.S's affairs with "The GOP comeback", talking about U.S politics shows that it is very popular in the USA because it shows that they have a large audience if they are willing to talk about things like that in their magazine.

Ideology: The ideology given by this contents page is that the magazine can be serious as well as being entertaining with stories about gigs and artists' lives but also with stories and articles about political issues and current affairs etc. There is also a mixture of seriousness that also talks about a popular artist, the story about "Eminem's Road Back From Hell" this is about how Eminem made his recovery from being a drug addict to blossoming as a huge music icon, this evidences that the magazine can have a serious side and a fun side.

Audience: Also with this mixture of genres and stories in the magazine means that there is a lot of content for all different types of people, this also means that the magazine will have a very large target audience simply because there is so much variety, if the stories were just about politics for example, the audience may be a lot smaller, the same could be said for if the magazine was just a particular music magazine but because the Rolling Stone is a mixture of the two it creates a much bigger target audience.

Representation: The representation of the colour scheme on this contents page is fairly contrasting to its genre, this is because the red, white and black colours are conventionally used on indie rock magazines but here the music used in articles in Rolling Stone magazine is again a mixture of genres for example on this contents page Taylor Swift, who is a country/pop artist is featured as well as Eminem who is a rap/hip hop artist.