Audiovisual Representation in Spanish and European Election Debates

The presence of ever more conflicting stances between Europhiles and Eurosceptics has revealed some audiovisual discourses unknown until now. The fragmentation of inconclusive narrative discourse and staged situations with a clear intent to clash all make it necessary to analyse in detail the role given by the audiovisual media to the European process of democratisation. This study addresses the audiovisual discourse in Spanish public television (TVE) with the intention of discovering how the different topics addressed in debates are dealt with in audiovisual production, and whether those topics have benefited from certain decisions by the production team that are subjective a priori. Using external codifiers, the intensity of each question has been checked and the result has been correlated with the dependent variables “[camera] shot with question while listening” and “shot with question with split screen”. The variables have been subjected to descriptive analyses, correlation with hypotheses, and bivariate analyses using Pearson’s correlation (Rx-y). The results indicate a clear difference in the modes of television representation between national Spanish and European debates. It is discussed whether this audiovisual differentiation may condition the perception that the audience may have of European politics.

Representations of Gender-Diverse Characters in Adventure Time and Steven Universe

Television is a strong educational and socializing agent for children. Watching television can teach children appropriate language and vocabulary to use, as well as the social norms about gender behaviors or activities. Previous research on gender representations in children’s television has been limited to studying male and female characters because children’s programming has historically presented audiences with cisgender characters (e.g., boy and girls). Recently, television shows aimed at children have provided audiences with nonbinary and gender-diverse characters. This study is the first exploratory content analysis, to my knowledge, to examine the portrayal and representation of nonbinary and gender-diverse characters in children’s television. The current study examined the gender-neutral pronoun and gendered language use toward nonbinary and gender-diverse characters, as well as the portrayal of these characters as leaders, and with special skills in Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Overall, nonbinary and gender-diverse characters were portrayed as strong, positive, characters, and were represented similarly to their cisgender counterparts. This represents a promising shift toward more inclusive and equitable television representation, which may lead to the acceptance and appropriate use of gender-neutral pronouns toward peers by cisgender children, and the feeling of visibility and validation by nonbinary children. Future research should examine the impacts of these characters on viewers. RELEVANCE STATEMENT: As children’s television becomes more diverse it has the potential to positively impact the lives of cisgender (e.g., boys and girls) and nonbinary children. Because television has the potential to influence young children, gender-diverse representations in children’s television may lead to children developing more accepting attitudes and behaviors toward nonbinary peers.

The intersection of science and television representation of gay sexuality in American culture: A shift from the anti-discrimination narrative to the Born This Way narrative

An investigation into the parallelism between media portrayals of gay individuals and the findings produced by the science community can offer possibilities to comprehend the intersection of science and popular culture on the topic of homosexuality. Recognizing this relationship renders it possible to address the historical evolution of media representations of homosexuality alongside the development of scientific knowledge on the same issue. That is, mainstream media can be perceived as a space in which perceptions of what gayness is and means has been negotiated. In this article, I set out to trace how media representations of gay sexuality have shifted from survival to legitimate presence by looking at the adoption of the Born This Way narrative as a new approach to understand homosexuality. To this end, the Born This Way narrative allows for thoughtful and productive representations of gay characters on mainstream television programmes, which the anti-discrimination narrative lacks.

Thirty years of (in)visible disability in Australian television: Home and Away’s experiments with representation and inclusion

Disability is an increasingly dominant aspect of television representation, audiences, industries and policy internationally and offers many insights into issues of exclusion and inclusion. In this article, we reflect upon disability and the histories of Australian television through a case study of a much loved and long-running soap – Home and Away. In particular, we explore issues of inclusion via an analysis of the representation of overlooked disabilities, such as mental health, chronic illness and other ‘invisible’ disabilities, contrasting a key moment in the programme in the late 1990s with developments in the 2002–2019 period.

Summaries

Susan Vertoont Representations of disability on primetime television in Flanders This paper examines primetime television representations of disability in Flanders. The aim of the study was to analyse in which identities (RQ 1) and in which roles (RQ 2) characters with disabilities are represented on television. By means of a quantitative content analysis in a constructed week (January-February 2016), 115 primetime television programs and 2.414 television characters were studied. The results show a bias in favour of adult, male characters with physical disabilities. Women, youngsters and seniors with disabilities are less frequently represented, as are people with health or learning disabilities. Moreover, we noticed little diversity among the genres and roles in which disabled characters are represented. Only roles that can grant disability a central story line, seem to include disabled characters. Roles in which disability would become a coincidental feature (e.g. candidates in game shows, supporting roles in fictional programs) do not seem to allow characters with disabilities. Keywords: disability, gender, television, representation, content analysis

After 1970

The Women's Strike for Equality was the final major movement story of 1970 as far as the networks were concerned, and it represented the culmination of feminism's growing visibility that year. However, when radical feminism disappeared from national television screens and was no longer available to serve as liberal feminism's extremist other, movement opponents were able to recast reformist issues such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as public signifiers of feminist radicalism. This chapter discusses this consequence as well as other ways in which the television news narratives produced in 1970 influenced developments in the movement and its network television representation in the decade that followed. It concludes that the failure of ERA ratification in 1982 seemed to mark the end of the second wave of feminism in the eyes of national media, ushering in a post-feminist media perspective. The chapter also takes up another key element in the post-1970 context: the rise of Gloria Steinem as feminism's enduring media icon.