When you first enter the E4 website for Skins the main theme
colour for the website is purple, this colour runs throughout the webpage as it’s
the main colour you would associate with E4 which helps the audience of the
website easily make the link that Skins is an E4 broadcasted programme, the use
of purple in the E4 logo is gender neutral; this means there is no gender bias
within the channel, this can also be carried over to the programme itself to
say that the programme isn’t targeted at any specific gender. The main image (signifier)
of the website is two girls hugging each other and smiling, the connotations
(signified) for this would be happiness and friendliness which makes the
website feel more welcoming and as the two girls in the image seem between the
ages of 17-20 we presume that the targeted audience age for the programme is
17-20. The central image may also suggest that skins is aimed for an audience of more girl, over boys. This is suggested by the girly friendship bond, clearly visible in the header.
As you scroll down the webpage on the left hand side of the
screen is a sidebar with the Skins’ social networking links, there is one for Facebook
and one for Twitter. Www.kenburbary.com
did a breakdown of the US users (gender and age) of the Facebook website and
found that over 50 million people between the ages of 18-25 use Facebook and http://pandodaily.com
did the same for Twitter and found out that 31% (the highest per cent) of all
twitter users are between the ages 18-24, this shows that the website is using
social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote new series and
to keep fan involved with the series because it is very popular with the target
audience for the programme.
The website is well anchored in text, the language used is
very colloquial and seems as the words used are words that the target audience for
this show would use. Words such as ‘gang’ is used for the group of actors and ‘tele’
is used instead of television are used and just simple things like saying “they’re”
instead of “they are” making the text less formal and easier to read. The
paradigmatic choices such as the sans serif font make it less formal and give a
friendlier overall look to the page; the images are very linear down the middle
of the page and are also very colourful grabbing the audience’s attention to
the image. 
Why do you think the central image for Skins are girls? Do you think this reflects the target audience? Your analysis of the site is good and your discussion of language was very interesting.
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