LGBT Representation In The Media

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Imagine watching television and having no characters to relate to. This is what it is like for LGBT or queer people all over the world. Out of the 895 main characters shown on television, “the overall percentage of LGBT regular characters on scripted broadcast series is 4.8%” (Ellis, Sarah Kate). That means that only 43 main characters on television are members of the queer community. While there are more openly queer people than ever before, the community still receives the least amount of representation in the media and this needs to change.
Representation in the media is important for countless reasons. While consuming media, people want a character that they can relate to. People are much more likely to consume media when there is the representation …show more content…

A way to do this is by choosing to consume the media with well represented LGBT characters. Media creators can view statistics on the number of people that watch, listen, or read the media they create. Having these statistics on the consumption will allow producers and writers to realize that queer representation is important to consumers. On Netflix, a network that is infamous for its LGBT representation, a show must hit a quota in order to continue producing.A newer show starring a lesbian teenager, Everything Sucks could not reach quota because it got next to no publicity, however the actors and fans of the show started a hashtag, “#iamkatemaser” to bring attention to the well loved …show more content…

By giving the producer feedback, the consumer expresses what is important and what he or she would like to have more of, which in this case would be LGBT representation. When writing the feedback, the consumers need to express that they like the representation in the show if it was positive. For example, when the Netflix show One Day At A Time included a main character who identified as lesbian, an abundance of viewers celebrated and gave feedback on various social media platforms. This lets the cast and crew know that the consumers were pleased with the queer representation and wanted more of it. However, if there is a harmful representation of the LGBT community the consumer should point it out and encourage the producer of the media to create more of. When a consumer criticizes media it allows the producer to know what not to do in future

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