Students’ Experiences with Diversity in Media
Return to the list of TV shows, movies and video games you made at the beginning of the lesson.
Divide the class into five groups and assign one of the categories (comedy shows, dramatic shows, reality TV, movies and video games) to each group.
Have students access the student chapter Diversity Portrayal and use the first Structure Strip activity to make a list of all of the diverse characters they can think of in each work: How many characters are members of a racialized group? How many characters have an identifiable religious belief (including characters clearly identified as being atheists)? How many Indigenous characters, characters with disabilities, and 2SLGBTQ+ characters are there? (Note that reality shows or online streamers/influencers/creators may not have “characters” but will still have people who appear regularly in major or minor roles, as described below.)
Next, have students use the second Structure Strip to sort the characters they identified into Lead characters (the show is about them or they are part of a group of four or fewer main characters), Major characters (a secondary character in a show about one person or a significant part of an ensemble of five or more characters) or Minor characters (does not fit either of the other two categories).
When students have finished, have them share their findings with the class:
- Did they find better or worse overall representation in some genres (drama, comedy, reality) or mediums (TV, games, movies)?
- Which groups are better represented in each medium, or overall?
- How many characters were Leads? How many were Major characters? How many were Minor characters?
- Were the patterns different for any different groups?
- Were there any groups not represented at all?
- Do students feel that the diversity that exists in Canadian society is accurately represented in the media?
Genre is the types or categories into which texts are grouped. For example, film genres include action, suspense and comedy. There are also more specific sub-genres such as superhero, romantic comedy, thriller and film noir.