Stewart-Millar's Findings

 

 

She devotes chapters of her book to display her background information. Some of her research findings included that 48% of people use computers at work. There are more male workers than female workers; therefore there are more male computer users. This might be a reason why "Wired" magazine caters towards male workers. In a study of 1997 subscription list, the average subscriber of "Wired" was a 39-year-old male graduate who had an annual income of $83,000 and household income of $122,600. This subscriber is more likely to be in an U.S. managerial position or a high executive position. A "Wired" customer representative stated to Millar, ""Wired" is focused on white males" when she inquired about ethnic background of its subscribers. (p. 75) According to a business study done by Telequest, "Wired" readers are more wired to the net as opposed to readers of other computer magazines. (Chapter )

Stewart Millar looks at the readership of the magazine, the household incomes of the readers, their job positions, and how much influence they have in the home and at work about computers. She also examines how many issues the subscribers have read, how long each issue takes to read, where they read the magazine, and also how they respond to ads in the magazine. Millar sees "Wired" as a medium to understand the message it sends to males. By doing this, she will be able to tell where the discourse is coming from; where the magazine finds it sources for socio-economic power, who are the creators of the magazine, and what are their position as well as the magazine position in North American society.

Wired first appeared in January of 1993 before the Internet was common in households. In this respect, "Wired" had a competitive advantage over other magazines that were introduced later. In its earlier days, "Wired" magazine carried advertisements that dealt specifically with computer technologies. Due to this, its readerships were mainly computer users and buyers. Recently, their advertisers have increased and also varied. Fashion companies such as CK and Gap have been added to the list of advertisers to help the magazines appeal to the mainstream audience.

 

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Anisa Tayab and Sulman Sheikh


MAJOR: English (3rd year) and Information Technology(3rd year)

email Anisa & Sulman at: anisasulman@yahoo.com