The representation of women, ethnic minorities, seniors and sexual minorities on streaming services and mainstream broadcasters lags behind. This is shown by research by communication scientist Serena Daalmans of Radboud University. ’Progress is happening in too small steps.’
Every few years, Daalmans looks at how minority groups are represented on television. Up until now, there was no comparative study that included streaming channels. Daalmans: ’Most streaming services pay a lot of attention to diversity: people are hired to look into diversity specifically, for example. It could be expected that minorities should be well represented on streamers.’
With colleagues Rhanna Haverkort and Mariska Kleemans, the communication scientist mapped what kind of people appeared in programs from the Top 10 recommended series (after creating a new account) at streaming services Netflix, Videoland, Prime and Disney. They did the same with a selection of programs aired on prime time at mainstream broadcasters such as NPO, RTL and SBS.
Daalmans: ’We looked at how many people from underrepresented groups appeared in these programs and whether that corresponded to the percentage they represent in Dutch society. We also examined the quality of the representation. How stereotypical was it? For example, women are often only depicted with children, or as romantic partners. And storylines of older people are often about illness.’
Women
The main conclusion was that women are still getting a raw deal, both on streaming services and broadcasters. ’In the nearly 15 years I’ve been studying this, the representation of this group changes the least. One in three of the people we see on TV are women, while more than half of the population is made up of women. In addition, they are often portrayed very stereotypically: for example, sometimes we don’t know whether they work, but we do know that they have a child or a relationship.’
Things were slightly different for ethnic and sexual minorities: they did appear proportionally, but ethnic minorities were not stereotype-free. Daalmans: "We saw that ethnic minorities were more often associated with crime.’
The representation of seniors left quite a bit to be desired: only 5% of the people on TV were over 65, while that group makes up over 20% of Dutch society.
Difference between streamers and broadcasters
There was little difference in representation between streaming services and broadcasters. ’Streamers mainly let people know that they want to represent fairly, but don’t really live up to this. A lot is said about representation by both regular broadcasters and streamers needing to improve, but the data show that progress is only made in very small steps.’
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Literature referenceDaalmans, S., Haverkort, R., & Kleemans, M. (2024). Streaming with more diversity? A comparison of the representation of minorities in broadcasting versus streaming television content. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599’024 -03442-2