Elle Magazine, legal issues

As far as I can see, Elleuk.com has not been involved in any illegal activity and as far as I know has never been taken to court. However, the Elle Magazine franchise has previously been cautioned to be sued.

Coco Rocha threatened Elle Brazil in April 2012 after the magazine photoshopped an image of her that was to appear on the cover, so that it appeared as though the model was showing far more skin than she agreed to. The model submitted the following statement on her tumblr. 

"As a high fashion model I have long had a policy of no nudity or partial nudity in my photo shoots. For my recent Elle Brazil cover shoot I wore a body suit under a sheer dress which I now find was photoshopped out to give the impression of me showing much more skin than I...am comfortable with. This was specifically against my expressed verbal and written direction to the entire team that they not do so. I’m extremely disappointed that my wishes and contract were ignored. I strongly believe every model has a right to set rules for how she is portrayed and for me these rules were clearly circumvented."

Below is the offending cover:

As far as I've researched, Coco Rocha took no further action.

In December 2010, Bollywood Actress, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan threatened to sue Elle after the colour of her skin appeared several shades lighter on her cover of the 14th anniversary issue. 

(Aishwarya's Cover for Elle)

This was not the first time Elle magazine has come under fire over such airbrushing, a similar situation occured with a cover of the U.S. edition earlier that year. Black actress Gabourey Sidibe appeared on the cover of the title with a noticeably paler complexion. On that occasion Elle claimed it had not altered the Precious star’s skin any more than that of the other models ­photographed alongside her.

(Gabourey Sidibe Elle cover)

French Elle also underwent further racism allegations following a feature that suggested that black celebrities were adopting a 'white style' with an ethnic twist. The editor had to issue a formal apology on a live French television show called Canal+.

(The feature that provoked controversy in Elle fr)

Elleonline Data handling

Elle gives people the option to join in debates so the website can collect data and use it in future articles. For example in a recent article called 'Why do we Want to be Thinner?' Elle captioned the end of the article by encouraging readers to 'join the debate' by tweeting in their opinions. This helps Elle to understand their demographic more.

The website is also able to guage the demographic by collecting data through a 'like' count. Each article gives the reader the option to 'like' it via Facebook. This enables Elle to collect data on what is the most popular on their site.

In some of their more scientific articles Elle has to rely on data collected by other sources. In a recent article about sleepwalking they chose to feature facts from a survey collected by Londonsleepcentre.com. This also suggests that their data collecting process applies only to the area local to the company, London.

Of course interviews that are on the site collect their data from the person being interviewed.

Week 7- Fight breaks out during student lecture

Lecture halls aren't best known for their drama. However today during their Journalism Futures lecture, students were awoken from their commotosed states by a rather dramatic interlude.

The University of the West of England students, in their third year of study, saw the end of their lecture come to a eastenders-like conclude when two girls, unknown to the rest of the class, walked in and began to argue.

The first girl had been rumoured to have entered the room ten minutes prior to the second who, as soon as she arrived, began a quarrel with the first. It was unclear what the girls issue was concerning but one was heard saying; 'All I hear is lies from you!' The first girl was heard trying to pursuade her companion that they ought to leave this discussion, but the second was insistant that the issue was resolved then.

It appeared that the lecture would have been lost for good had not one chirpy student, Georgia Legallinne, asking them to 'take it outside.' The girls promptly left but not before pointing directly at Lee Salter, the students' lecturer, and stating 'I knew you would f**king do this.'

On interview Georgia said; 'I'd never seen those girls before but I'm pretty sure one of the girls does Drama.' Other students were quick to question whether the girls fight was a piece of performing arts. Other concerns remain around Lee Salter's involvment with the girls row and what could have possibly sparked such an unruly argument.

Elle Magazine facts and figures

Elle Readership figures ending March 2011

Reach:

It was read by 797,000 adults.

Percentage reach:

It was read by 1.6% of the adult population.

ELLE is the world’s biggest-selling fashion magazine and largest fashion online network. It is THE international authority on STYLE with 43 magazines editions and
28 websites worldwide. Launched in Paris in 1945 ELLE was the first to inspire women to celebrate their personal STYLE and individuality.

Brand Proposition
For Stylish Young Individuals, ELLE is the style guide that decodesthe world of fashion and culture to provide useful inspiration and practical ideas for developing your own style , in every area of your life.

Brand Values
Stylish
Thought-provoking
Inspiring
Useful
In the know

The editors and journalists of Elle

Elleuk.com currently has 9 online editors stretching across different departments including:
-Editor
-Acting Fashion Editor
-News Editor
-Commercial Editor
-Picture Editor
-Acting Picture Editor
-Travel Editors (3)

(Carrie Tyler- Editor of elleuk.com)

It has 7 other online roles which are the following:
-Fashion Features Director
-Beauty Writer
-Fashion Assistant
-Creative Director
-Picture Assistant
-Travel Assistant
-Fashion Intern

Overall there are 16 members of staff who work for elleuk.com

Audience feedback and interaction

Elleuk.com does facillitate audience and feedback interaction. One of the main ways in which they do this is through their twitter feed. The site features a twitter feed which has a live stream of tweets both from ELLE itself and it's readers. Because the stream is live anyone could write anything about ELLE and it would be featured on the site, this gives a feel of audience freedom.

Beneath all of the articles featured on the site, the readers are given the option to tweet, like on Facebook, pin to their Pinterest, google+ or email the article. However unlike it's competitors, elleuk.com does not have the option for readers to comment on articles. This gives the impression that this is more of an elite online publication that does not really allow for citizen journalism or crowdsourcing.

Week 5- seminar, social media, personalisation and distribution

Here is Elle UK's ABC cross platform circulation cirtifcate.

elleuk.com has covered costumes from the new Bond film. On a search of twittermap of 'bond costumes' the following was tweeted:

WTFWatchTimeFly from Nottingham UKBond costumes: 'We made it as naked as possible': Jany Temime designed for Skyfall   http://t.co/rYybA0y8

FemminaForte from US#fashion Bond costumes: 'We
made it as naked as possible' - Jany Temime designed for Skyfall   http://t.co/I4cjGMO3



liz_creep from EnglandBond costumes: 'We made it as naked as possible': Jany Temime designed for Skyfall http://t.co/XNWXvXhX

Two of the tweets featured words used by the magazine, and only one of the tweets was from outside of the UK.

I then did a second search for 'Royal Wedding Style' as reported by the site and there was larger increase in tweets. The majority were in the USA, then one tweet in Britain and another in Denmark.

I looked on google trends for Royal Wedding Style and it displayed the following results:



 Once again most of the interest was generated from the USA.

I used the search tool 'site explorer' to investigate elleuk.com's online presence.

It appears that the site has a quite a big online authority. The majority of the links to the site that were listed were from amateur fashion bloggers.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is an act whereby a job that would usually been given to one individual becomes on open market and 'the crowd' can contribute. Wikipedia is a form of crowdsourcing because anyone can contribute. Elleuk uses crowd sourcing in the way that it streams it's audience's tweets on the site providing content for the site, but using the crowd to gain this content.