The Cultural Campaigners: The Role of Advocacy in Shaping and Changing Magazine Identities.

The influence of magazines—and particularly women’s magazines upon social constructions of femininity—has been a focus of academic study since Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963).

However, the role of magazines within this genre and in others (such as business-to-business and hobby magazines) as active advocates in the public sphere has been an area of less focus magazines such as The Ladies’ Magazine (US) and The English Woman’s Journal promoting women’s emancipation as far back as the Victorian age. This article will argue, from a historical perspective, that the advocacy component of magazines has been under-represented and that this function is still important in the digital age.

The form of magazines means they are ideally positioned for such advocacy because like newspapers they are regular publications, but they are not constrained by the immediate demands of the news agenda. In addition, their relationship with the reader has allowed them to focus on areas of relevance to their readers which are not headline-grabbers. For instance, as Toon (2015) has pointed out, UK women’s magazines pioneered the discussion of both breast cancer and its treatment in the 1970s. In similar vein Korinek, (2000) has honed in on the feminist outlook of Chatelaine magazine in Canada in the 1960s raising formerly taboo areas such as legalised abortion.

For some magazines, such as the tub-thumping temperance magazines of Victorian times; the feminist, 1970s British magazine Spare Rib or Steinem’s Ms the magazine is in itself an instrument of advocacy. In other magazines, that public sphere advocacy is diffuse. Saarenmaa and Ruoho (2013) for instance focus on how Finnish women’s magazines have actively supported and celebrated the rise of female politicians within Finland, but how the fact that this coverage is situated within women’s magazines means that their impact has not been fully evaluated.

This article explores through content and contextual analysis how the use of the magazine as an instrument of advocacy has developed. It focuses primarily on UK women’s magazines but also examines international examples and examples from other categories.

It also aims to explore how such strategies are currently being adapted and reinvigorated through a multi-platform approach by magazines as disparate as US Cosmopolitan and UK Construction News in order to allow them to continue this important function in the digital age.

Key words: Magazine, advocacy, public sphere, digital.