Exam mock

In the past the LGBT community  was under represented in the tv sector. However, over the years there has been a significant increase in representations from 2015 to 2019.

Looking at the past the stimulus material it states that fasteners was "criticised in parliament for the first on screen gay kiss". This shows the issues revolving around the LGBT community and how their was still many debates around it and it was barely spoke about to a point where it reached parliament debate. I done some further research into this and discovered that there was a significant lack of LGBT representations in the UK up until 2009, this is when the first episode of the hit tv show "Glee" was released. The first episode had 1 million viewers and the numbers kept increasing, the episode consisted of many characters especially a gay white man.  This shows the LGBT stereotype the show is  focusing on making it a sole representation on tv at that time.

In today's world the presence of LGBT in tv has made an significant increase with the effect to challenge those "outdated stereotypes" and the debates attacked to the community .According to a research study taken by Glaad it found that 4.8% of the characters expected to appear on Prime time scripted broadcast tv would be LGBT.

My primary  research supports this as I carried out research analysing the CWs hit tv shows and discovered that they revealed one of the most popular villains was gay and only recently they revealed one of their lead female superhero was transgender and was being played by a transgender as well. However the shows focus was not on their sexuality it was based upon the crimes they committed and the bad things they done as well as the good things they done and the things they have to deal with being gay and transgender. These representations are significant as it does not represent the community to be idealistiv, however is ensuring the characters are given as much depth as a heterosexual character.

The secondary source used to answer the question is reliable as it has a excellent reputation for providing accurate facts and information as well specialising in matters concerning the LGBT community and issues annual reports ensuring the data is up to date.

When conducting my research I used a range of different sources, one being the Glaad report titled "where we are now" . I chose to use this source because Glaad specialises in LGBT issues by releasing reports annually meaning that the information provided in the reports is up to date and accurate.furthermore, in Glaads report they also go into detail about the change of the LGBT representations across many forms of media and the specific representations often used in tv. Although this report is only using data based on USA tv so it is not a true accurate representations of the LGBT community as a whole.

In addition, another source I discovered was on a website called Wikipedia because it is a website that has been around a long time however, I was soon to realise anyone can create an account and edit the information provided which made me understand that the information was not reliable at all.

Therefore, I found another source which was a newspaper article
From the sun. I believe this source is reliable because the newspaper company and the journalist has a excellent reputation for delivering accurate and influential information. The article talks about LGBT characters in tv shows and their familiarity with the stereotypes of the LGBT community.However, the information provided in the article could be bias as the journalist may influence readers by incorporating their personal opinions into their article .

One conclusion I developed from the research I conducted was that over the past few years there has been a significant increase in LGBT characters within tv. The stimulus material provided supports my conclusion as it shows from 1987 until 2017 tv shows that includes LGBT characters has increased. Furthermore my own secondary research supports this as I discovered many tv shows producing characters from the LGBT community, for example in glee there is 4 gay characters who have important roles and some have been in every episode glee also has 2 main lesbian characters and as it increases in episodes they introduced a transgender main character that deals with community not accepting them. My primary research also supports this conclusion as 98% of people have recognised this significant increase in LGBT characters in tv shows from 1990 to 2019.

Another conclusion I have created once I finished my research was that online streaming platforms have more variety of representations of the LGBT community than tv. My primary research also supports this conclusion as 67% of the people emotion my survey state that they are more of a variety of representations of the LGBT community online on streaming services such as twitch, YouTube and 123movies which allows the streaming of tv shows compared to tv. The stimulus material also provided supports my conclusion as it states that Orange is the new black features more in depth portrayal of gay female characters.

To decide a way to understand how representations of the LGBT community could improve I asked the question " what do you think the media could do to cut down on using stereotypes  of the LGBT community? " the most common answer was " get companies to employ a member of the LGBT community when developing games or character s also have more main roles LGBT characters" this suggests that more lead roles need to be given to the LGBT community when it comes to games or tv to help show how different they all are.

within the previous statement it says "get companies to employ a member of the LGBT community". This suggests that they believe characters from the LGBT courses being portrayed poorly and not accurate which could be because the writers of the characters do not fully understand the character they are writing as they will probably not be a part of that community.

The main point I believe all the research and sources convey is that members from the LGBT community need to be added into games and tv naturally and realistically for the audience to fully understand them. Within an interview I conducted the interviewee stated " I believe all gay characters in tv shows are portrayed the same with the same problems and this is not accurate". This quotation shows how things need to change with how the LGBT community is represented to gain a wider audiences approval.

Personally I believe the government equality office should conduct research into the representations of the LGBT community in UK media/ tv to gain responses and information from the audiences, to show how diversity is being implemented into tv shows. The reports that would be issued could contain more information on how many transgender characters are on tv shows and the number over time.

There needs to be more primary research taken to help identify and understand how the LGBT community s feel about the representations that they see if themselves in the media. A focus group should take place with members of the LGBT community and producers of tv shows to help identify and solve the issues of stereotypes and allowing the community to give advice on what is is really like. Hopefully this would have A positive outcome on tv allowing shows to have a more accurate representation of members of the LGBT community whilst also making the community happy.

Demographics would need to be taken into consideration when researching because in my primary research people aged 16-18 years old answered it however it would have been beneficial for me to expand the age range of whom participates in the survey in order to produce more of a accurate form of results based upon individuals opinions on representations and how they may differ due to age.