From grassroots to dissent: media activism and campaigning for equality, diversity and inclusion in media industries

ABSTRACT

Media access in terms of participation and representation are central issues for underrepresented groups, particularly in media systems that are dominated by a homogenous elite. This article sets out to understand media activism in Ireland, especially by those who are campaigning for greater participation and better representation in the Irish media industry. While tools, measures and policies have been developed at varying levels within the media industry to improve Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), often these engagements with EDI issues do not directly speak to communities themselves. To that end, this article seeks to address this gap, setting out to understand media activism in Ireland through semi-structured interviews with 17 media activists from varying minoritized groups. The article is structured around four central themes: (i) problems identified, (ii) representation versus participation, (iii) possible changes and improvements and (iv) positioning for changes in the future. From these findings, the article makes two central recommendations: on the one hand, the development of policies regarding EDI must include the voices of the communities directly affected and on the other hand, media activists from minority or disenfranchised groups need to be considered as voices of authority on matters pertaining to them.

KEYWORDS:

• Media activism
• Equality
• diversity and inclusion
• social justice
• media diversity
• Irish media

Introduction

In 2022, in the run up to Dublin Pride, a popular day time phone-in radio show Liveline, on Ireland’s public service broadcaster Radio Teilifis Éireann (RTÉ), held a series of debates over the course of several days about trans and non-binary identities. A conservative group called into the show to oppose the removal of the word ‘woman’ from maternity legislation, a change in language that was intended to be more inclusive of trans and non-binary parents (RTÉ Radio 1 2022). A series of manufactured and sensationist debates enabled the verbal mistreatment of trans and non-binary individuals and a recurrent pattern of offensive, damaging and violent claims were made against them. This constituted a mainstreaming of hate speech on one of Ireland’s most popular daily radio shows. This was done without facilitating anyone from the trans community to defend themselves or to speak on their own terms about the orchestrated event that vilified their community. As a result of the incident, Dublin Pride quickly ended their formal partnership with RTÉ, which had been in place since 2019 (Linhean 2022). In a different but not too dissimilar event in 2021, Ken O’Flynn, a local councillor in Cork City, appeared on the popular local radio Red FM programme The Neil Prenderville Show, where he made inflammatory comments about the Cork Traveller community, spreading false information about the community, which went unchallenged, and without any member of the Cork Traveller community included. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) later held up a complaint made by the Cork Traveller Women’s Network in relation to the interview (Griffin 2022).

While these incidents involve different minority groups in multifaceted situations, they both point to a similar issue – that of access to media, who gets to say what and on whose terms. Media access in terms of participation and representation are central issues for minority groups, particularly in media systems that are dominated by homogenous elites. Accordingly, media activists strive to critique instances such as those mentioned in the introduction and attempt to engage with media, in an attempt to offer solutions but also to improve pathways for participation and representation. However, all too often, media activist voices are not part of the conversation or discourse. While tools, measures and policies have been developed at the level of the media industry to improve Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), often these engagements with EDI issues do not directly speak to the communities themselves.

To that end, this article seeks to address this gap, setting out to understand the perspective of media activists in Ireland, especially those campaigning for greater participation in media industries. The article finds that activists could clearly identify inequalities in media representation; they noted imbalance between representation versus participation in media; activists specified changes needed and finally they argued for improved positioning vis a vis media power brokers to ensure changes for the future. Consequently the article makes two recommendations: firstly we argue that the development of tools, measures and policies regarding EDI must include the voices of the communities directly affected by these policies and secondly, media activists from minority or disenfranchised groups need to be considered as voices of authority on matters pertaining to them.

The need for diversity

As of the 2022 National Census, the fastest growing ethnic group in Ireland was those who did not identify as ‘white Irish.’ While ‘white Irish’ remains the largest group composing 77% of the population, the categories of ‘any other white background’ (10.9%), ‘Asian’ (3.7%), Black (1.5%) and ‘other including a mixed background’ (1.28%) continues to grow. Irish travellers make up 0.6% of the population while the Chinese population stands at 0.5% (CSO 2022). The same census indicates that in terms of disability, 22% of the Irish population reported experiencing at least one long-lasting condition or difficulty to any extent. In comparison to its European counterparts, Ireland has been presented by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) as one of the most diverse countries in the European Union, with an approximate 17% of the resident population born in another country (McGinnity et al. 2018). While the population and the workforce in Ireland have become more diverse, it is not clear whether the media workforce has diversified in a similar manner. Data on diversity in relation to gender, race, ethnicities, class, or disabilities in the Irish media workforce does not currently exist. This lack of data has been noted as a point of concern for developing sustainable diversity in the media industries workforce (Kerrigan, Liddy, and O’Brien 2023; Liddy, Kerrigan, and O’Brien 2022; O’Brien, Kerrigan, and Liddy 2023). Nonetheless, minoritised and disenfranchised groups have developed systems of media activism to address inequalities and the lack of diversity in the Irish media. This article adopts Carroll and Hackett’s (2006) definition of media activism as organized grassroots efforts directed ‘to creating or influencing media practices and strategies, whether as a primary objective or as a by-product of other campaigns’ (p. 85). Various minority groups have recognized a lack of social, cultural, economic and cultural capital in terms of their representation and participation in Irish media industries. Here, representation refers to how the media portrays the identity characteristics of various social groups (Fürsich 2010). However these media activists and their organizations still experience significant exclusions in terms of EDI in Irish media industries and it is to understanding how they are under-represented and how they believe they can be better included in EDI measures towards media equality that this article speaks.

Literature review

Much research on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Creative Industries, or on media work more specifically, has addressed the problem regarding exclusions of underrepresented groups from media work. The ongoing inequalities in the media workforce have been clearly and thoroughly established (Banks 2017; Banks and Hesmondhalgh 2009; Oakley 2013). Moreover, the specific identity-dimensions of workers who are treated unequally have been explored across numerous studies. These include research on class (Brooke, O’ Brien, and Taylor 2016) on women workers (Lauzen 2020; O’Brien 2019), on how race impacts on media workers (Nwonka and Malik 2018) on disability (Randle and Hardy 2017; Wilkes, Carey, and Florisson 2020) on sexuality (Kerrigan 2021; O’Brien and Kerrigan 2020) on family status (Berridge 2019; O’Brien and Liddy 2021) on ethnicity (Belfiore 2020) and on the intersectionality of elements of each of those identities (Cobb and Wreyford 2021).

Research has also looked at specific interventions needed to achieve greater equality for workers. Key interventions proposed including changes to recruitment practices to ensure equity (Wreyford, 2015). Similarly engagements with changing leadership approaches (Steiner, 2015) and changing leaders’ approaches to EDI can ‘inspire others (Sawyer and Valerio, 2018) and put pressure on others to act (Lansu et al., 2020) (O’Brien, Kerrigan, and Liddy 2023). Training has been shown to impact change (Cobb 2020) as has employment progression practices (Brook et al, 2020). There is some evidence that empowering interventions such as training schemes and mentorship programmes can provide ‘limited numbers of women, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people and disabled people with entry routes to the industry’ (CAMEo 2018, 9). Research has also proposed numerous ways in which diversity can be improved at a more macro level (Henry and Ryder 2021; Wreyford, O’Brien & Dent, 2021).

Most research however also notes that while interventions are undoubtedly worthwhile they cannot generate ‘systemic challenges to workforce diversity in the screen sector’ and so need to be underpinned by additional ‘systemic initiatives’ (CAMEo 2018, 46). Interventions at the systemic level seek to transform sectoral practices, to remove barriers to equal participation and often operate at a policy level within individual organizations ‘such as reshaping recruitment processes or delivering unconscious bias training for decision-makers as well as at industry levels (for example, linking funding awards to practices that facilitate equal opportunity)’ (Newsinger and Eikhof 2020, 56). However there is limited research currently on how systemic change can be successfully operationalized with Kerrigan et al. (2023) noting that ‘very little research looks beyond specific initiatives, particular employers or individual organizations to explore how change is adopted more broadly within the sector’.

In the absence of an overarching account of EDI change, a strong strain of Creative Industries research continues to explore how broadcasters, professional organizations and production companies engage with improving EDI. In the UK context the ‘Creative Majority’ report outlines comprehensive and effective guiding principles for improving diversity and inclusion, those being ‘ambition, allyship, accessibility, adaptability and accountability’ (Wreyford, O’ Brien & Dent, 2021). The report underscores the role of leadership and collective responsibility in initiating immediate and long-lasting change, it recommends five benchmarks to help achieve this change: ambition for EDI, developing allyship to ensure all voices are heard, focusing on accessibility to ensure fair and equitable participation in media, grounding adaptable tools for varying contexts and certifying accountability, to ensure that actions are incorporated and maintained for short-term and long-term success (Wreyford, O’ Brien & Dent, 2021). Kerrigan, Liddy and O’Brien (2023) similarly underscore the variety of actions needed to generate focused and accelerated results in EDI policy initiatives. Encompassed in this are the publication and implementation of policy documents; ‘regular public reporting on successes and failures; accountability on the part of leaders, policy makers and organizations; setting targets with a stated commitment to diverse outcomes; tracking and monitoring funding awards and hiring decisions; diversifying recruitment sources and collating and publishing statistics and workforce demographics. (e.g. Armstrong & Page, 2015; Vinnicombe et al. 2020)’ (Liddy, Kerrigan and O’Brien, 2022; Kerrigan, Liddy and O’Brien, 2023)

Finally, one further tranche of research is beginning to examine how policy development has improved conditions for EDI. The development of diversity policy has seen the focus move on from the numerical inclusion of under-represented groups to address more qualitative issues of equity (O’Brien et al., 2017). Research has established that policy initiatives have been generated as a mode of addressing issues of inequality within the film industry (Nwonka, 2020; Nwonka and Malik 2018). However, a key challenge that research highlights is that transformational interventions are potentially problematic and controversial because they require ‘uneasy coalitions of stakeholders and the forging of alliances to implement and run’ such initiatives (Newsinger and Eikhof 2020, 57). Belifiore has argued that it is ‘an important task of cultural and creative industries policy to acknowledge and address (instead of merely reflecting) (the) unequal distributions of value, voice, and symbolic power’ (2021:385). While much of the research described above tends to focus on larger organizations, key decision makers and funding bodies, almost no research exists that accounts for how underrepresented groups would like the media industry to address their inclusion in media work. Ultimately Belifiore (2021) and Malik et al.’s (2017) studies are rare engagements with the question of how minority or marginalized groups see cultural production and how they would like to ideally engage in cultural production. Much of the research and recommendations for improving EDI issues in the media do not consult affected groups for their input regarding how their participation can be improved and also be equitable – it is to that question that this article is addressed.

Methodology

The research’s conceptualization of media activism draws on Carroll and Hackett’s (2006, 85) definition of the term, as ‘creating or influencing media practices and strategies, whether as a primary objective or as a by-product of other campaigns’. The participants for this study include 17 grassroots activists; some were selected from groups with a focus on media, other participants were individual social actors and not necessarily formally affiliated with activist groups or organizations. The latter were publicly active on the question of media inclusion and as representatives of their particular minoritized group. All participants were either engaged in direct action within communities, or publicly making demands for changes regarding access to media, or focused on community participation and representation within the media industry more broadly. Our participants self-identified as media activists or as activists with an interest in EDI concerns in relation to media industries.

Data were derived from semi-structured interviews Galletta (2013, 2) with a purposive snowball sample (Creswell 2012, 209) of 17 media activists from across varying different social groups, from September 2021 – January 2022. All interviews were conducted by the authors, some in person and others over Zoom, with most lasting approximately 40 minutes to 1 hour. Participants were asked a series of questions from an interview schedule about routines of media activism as they related to EDI, what issues and problems could media activists identify, and what would they like to see changed in media industries in terms of EDI. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and anonymized. Confidentiality was assured, with any details that might reveal the identities of participants changed, this included omitting any specific information relating to anything that could potentially lead to the identification of a participant. Given the nature of some of the research, participants were asked how they would like to be identified in the article. Participants chosen identifiers are included in Table 1. Letter identifiers are used throughout to minimally identify participants and ensure their anonymity.

Table 1. List of media activist participants.

Identifier	Description	Gender
A	Black Irish Media Activist	Female
B	Black Irish Media Activist	Male
C	Gay Media Activist	Male
D	Racial Justice Media Activist	Female
E	Lesbian Media Activist	Female
F	Feminist Media Activist	Female
G	Disabled Media Activist	Female
H	Trans Media Activist	Female
I	Racial Justice Media Activist	Male
J	Traveller Media Activist	Female
K	Disabled Media Activist	Male
L	Traveller Media Activist	Female
M	Neurodivergent Media Activist	Female
N	Black Irish Media Activist	Female
O	Disabled Media Activist	Male
P	Black Irish Media Activist	Female
Q	Disabled Media Activist	Male

While there was some intersectionality in the identities of the respondents they chose to connect with a primary form of activism, which the respondents self-selected and interestingly, no activist chose intersecting labels for their activism. Transcripts were coded, codes were clustered together to generate themes and those themes were analysed (Braun & Clarke, 2019) to generate an overarching framework for examining the perspectives of media activists on their place and value in media industries and on what they believed most needs to change in the sector. These are described in detail in the findings section below.

Findings

Four key themes that emerged from the data were: (i) activist identified problems with inequalities in media representation; (ii) they noted imbalance between representation versus participation; (iii) activists specified changes and improvements that they said were needed; and (iv) activists argued for positioning with regard to power brokers to ensure changes for the future.

Problems identified

One of the main issues that all respondents identified was with representation in the media. They were frequently not represented at all or misrepresented, with one respondent noting ‘the issue for my community is the representation is just not there … I’m trying to think of people of Asian heritage in the media right now … and I can’t … ’ (B). Another agreed that ‘women’s voices remain a minority … they are not represented in crucial areas of public policy particularly’ (F). Another trans activist agreed that ‘trans inclusion is non-existent, there’s very few places in the Irish media that we feel comfortable to engage with’ (H). A person of colour commented: ‘It’s still the same one person of colour on RTÉ presenting … all the diversity talk … just fizzles away’ (B). A disabled activist pointed out the absence of their voices noting ‘it’s quite often a service provider that talks on behalf of us’ (K). What is interesting here is the commonality across different identities, while the respondents are speaking for different minority groups they are all experiencing the same thing, which is a fundamental failure on the part of media to represent them.

Activists understood that when they did appear they were frequently misrepresented. If under-represented groups were included in media content it was only to talk about elements of their identity such as their race, or ethnicity or sexuality. One disabled activist noted how disability is represented as a tragedy … or as inspirational … I’d love to see disability presented from the view of people with disabilities … the focus is always going to the carer and what their needs are … disabled people are presented as burdens not rights holders (G). Similarly, Travellers spoke of the misrepresentation of their identity ‘the coverage of Travellers in the media … like basically it’s murder talk … the comments are “spray them with slurry, shoot them … it’s really, really bad”’ (J). One Black Irish activist spoke about how they were only included on topics to do with identity, ‘when you’re in the media as a Black person you’re often being asked to talk about racism a lot … It’s kind of like they don’t know what to do with us’ (A). Again what is interesting here is the common experience across respondents, that despite their different backgrounds minorities can only speak to their minoritized identity. A few activists put this succinctly and in very similar terms ‘when they’re asked to speak in mainstream media it’s never you know a person of colour speaking about the housing crisis … it always comes back to their identity’ (I). A disability activist similarly commented ‘I’d love to see more programmes where somebody with a disability pops up in some context and it’s isn’t just because of their disability’ (G). A gay activist noted that when it’s pride month ‘for the next few weeks every time a news story comes on it’s with somebody from the queer community … and it disappears from the face of the earth after pride month’ (D). For all the activists they felt that they should be included across content rather than just in specialist pieces that were about identity, they argued the former is ‘important for visibility and representation’ (J).

In a similar way for media content creators, there was also wariness of only being involved in content creation that focused on their identity. A respondent noted ‘As creators they often feel pigeon holed into doing disability issues or they run away from it because there’s a huge issue of stigma or shame around disability’ (G). Another Black Irish activist similarly noted ‘It’s just too draining and I don’t want to be known as a person who talks about race’ (B). Activists spoke of their desire that their ‘othered’ identities be normalized in media content. A person of colour pointed to the need to normalize Black Irishness ‘I’d just prefer to have a Black person present the weather, because then you are just normalizing different shades of Irishness’ (N). A gay activist similarly noted the need to normalize queerness ‘it needs to be more like oh there’s a housing crisis let’s bring on a queer person to see how this is affecting their community’ (C). A key point to note is that the normalization of identity was a shared value for all respondents with minoritized identities, something that was common across all of the media activists from varying social groups.

As well as being under-represented, misrepresented and only engaged on topics connected to identity, activists also claimed that they were exploited, and used by media outlets whereby elements of their identities were sensationalized in media content. As one respondent commented: ‘when it comes to queer people, they’re looking for the negative story, they’re looking for the homophobia, where is the community falling down? … There needs to be a major shift in how media workers frame stories’ (C). Another activist agreed ‘You rarely get coverage of Trans issues unless it’s something controversial … demonizing or othering trans people … ’ (E) An activist for Traveller rights similarly described how live radio phone-in shows in particular sensationalized stories: ‘We’ve met with one of the researchers of the show and they said their never going to cover ‘Traveller pride is a nice thing’ and ‘Travellers deserve rights’ because that doesn’t encourage people to ring in and it doesn’t make for dramatic radio’ (J). Disability activists agreed that they too were often presented in a sensational and emotive manner ‘the focus is primarily on the sensationalism of the “Poor Maura, she’s stuck in the bed 24 hours a day”, that kind of salaciousness … the media seem to be very regressive when it comes to impairment and disability representation in Ireland’ (Q). Here again it is evident how exploitation is common to minoritized sexual identities, as well as to Travellers and disabled people. All of these different groups share the same experience of exploitation in the name of story, because they hold a minority identity they are only ever represented or misrepresented as a minority.

Representation versus participation

Underrepresented groups also noted that the media failed to engage them fully and were inclined to homogenize entire groups based on single inputs. Within this process, they felt that journalists frequently did not listen or understand their perspective. The experience of one person speaking for their identity category was again something that all groups experienced in common. There was little difference in how one group or another was treated, were generally minoritized in some way through their engagements with media. With regard to homogenization one person of colour activist explained: ‘If they’ve identified a speaker from a certain marginalized community, it’s only that speaker that’s being asked questions as opposed to branching out … because I can’t speak for the whole Black experience’ (N). A gay activist agreed ‘I think there needs to be more engagement with representing local queer communities rather than just saying “The Irish Queer Community”’ (C). As well as tending to homogenize groups based on single inputs, activists described how media creators often failed to listen to groups and understand their point of view. One trans activist noted ‘there’s a lack of understanding about what we’re going through … the media have gone back to this sensational idea of a man becoming a woman … it’s gone backwards to how we were seeing it in the 80s’ (H). Similarly another queer activist noted ‘it’s very hard to have conversations with the media because … a lot of journalists think they know it all already … they’re afraid that you’re lobbying them whereas really we’re just trying to educate them … ” (E). This latter comment pinpoints the problem – that journalists think they already know the story because they ‘know’ the minority and so every story has to fit the reductive journalistic heuristic rather than allowing the contributors to lead with the descriptions of their own experience.

In addition to seeing problems with how they were represented in media content, many activists from underrepresented groups also saw problems with a lack of participation from their groups amongst media workers. One Black Irish activist explained ‘Before it was just accepted that there wasn’t much diversity on screen or on radio, but now people really want a big change … (B). Activists were clear on the structural and cultural barriers to accessing media work. They noted that entry routes into media production work were difficult to access for their communities. A Black Irish activist explained there’s a lack of talent initiatives … what pipelines are there for people to get there? There aren’t to be honest, not that I’m seeing, And I think we failed minority people from all those backgrounds there’s no initiatives to cater to them (B). Oftentimes members of underrepresented groups were only included in tokenistic ways in content creation. As another Black Irish activist noted: ‘I’m scared Irish media could become “Oh there’s only room for one, we don’t really want to hire but we’ll just throw one in”’(A). Another respondent agreed ‘I do get excited when I see someone of colour or a Black person in the media, but there is always this weird feeling that I get that this person is being used for tokenism … ’ (B).

The structural block on participation constructed through racial barriers was almost identically described as an ableist barrier by other respondents, and as an ethnic exclusion by Travellers. Again the point here is the similarity of experience of exclusion despite huge differences amongst minoritized identity. A disability activist noted the difficulty of getting into media work: ‘If you’re a disabled person it’s very, very difficult to get into the media … you’ll always be pigeonholed into a certain stereotype that the media has of you’ (O). An activist in neurodivergence concluded ‘the biggest barrier is production companies being willing to employ people … if production companies (had) a code of practice … if they could educate themselves … that will allay their fears and more people will be employed’ (M). A trans activist also spoke of the difficulty of getting into media work: ‘it is very difficult sometimes for trans people to get work … then trying to come out within a very public forum of employment such as media. I think that makes it that bit more difficult.’ (H). A Traveller activist noted that ‘a targeted approach would have to be the way it would have to go … we need to reach out to Travellers and encourage them into the media as a viable option and a profession to engage with … ’ (L). All minoritized identities experienced the workplace through their identity and through experiences of structural exclusion from that type of work. One activist called for changes that might address that structural impediment ‘There needs to be more pathways for minority groups into media, more grants for setting up your own studio, more mentorships, more internships … more pathways education wise … ’ (D)

While there was much discussion of EDI on the part of media organizations, activists noted that they were very slow to take action, this was an experience again common to all groups. Disability activists felt that action was slow to arrive ‘We’re all aware now of impairments and minority groups but we need to act on that now … ‘ (K). A Black Irish activist noted the problem was a ‘lack of trying … we need the companies to put in an effort it’s not going to happen if they don’t do it from their side, it’s not going to happen on ours (B). One respondent made a crucial point regarding consultation and collaboration with groups on diversity and inclusion. As she put it There’s a lot of intentions and strategies and initiatives but I don’t think they’re really in-depth and I don’t think they’re actually discussed with the groups affected … it’s not led by the affected groups and not respecting their expertise in the area (G). Only one activist was ambitious for media industries and believed they could move beyond the current impasse ‘We’ve got to stop looking at international best practice, we can be the creators of best international practice’ (N). Despite differences across their identities all respondents were articulating an exclusion in representation and participation that operated off of the same reductive dynamic of judging them as minorities, as othered.

Changes and improvements

While many of the activists underline problems in terms of media diversity, along with issues pertaining to representation and participation, they similarly note the changes they want to see in the media at a larger level, be that through their own activism or through broader cultural change in representation and participation in media.

Hiring practices in terms of recruitment and diversifying media work were one of the common threads to emerge amongst all of the media activists regarding what they would like to see change. One participant who identifies as Black Irish spoke to the fact that more inclusive hiring practices are required within the production context. In saying that, they specifically commented that they would like to see more carefully considered hiring rather than just operating to a quota. Specifically they note, it’s like if someone wants to make a show about cats … Let’s see how many Black people are on the team. We all have cats, it’s not a particularly Black experience … However, if you want to create content that is for people of African descent … it is crucial that you have someone from that background in the production pipeline (P). A media activist from a Traveller organization noted that a ‘targeted approach to the Traveller community’ is required to consciousness-raise amongst Travellers that media is a viable option in terms of a career. An LGBT media activist noted that while internships might serve as a ‘foot in the door’ to obtain experience, there also needs to be more long-term commitments to sustainable diversity within the media industry (C). Specifically, this activist noted that including LGBT people as presenters or contributors to media during Pride season is ‘positive, but it needs to go beyond that, we need to see queer people sustained in varying ways through the media and not always in ways that are specific to their identity’. Similarly, this was noted by other Black Irish media activists, who remarked that ‘visibility of media workers who are people of colour needs to extend beyond the likes of Black History Month’ (A).

A lot of the responses from the media activists centred around them wanting to see change in relation to meaningful representation of their community, both in terms of quantity and quality of appearances. One activist from a racial minority noted: I would love to see some sort of directory geared towards minority groups, so that if media had something they wanted to get a quote from, they could just go to this directory and see that someone who is Black or Asian is an expert on economics, or housing (D). Consistently media activists noted that service providers or other individuals that were not from their community were a significant problem in terms of participation in the media. The activists commented that they wanted the community to speak for themselves, on their own terms and not have outsiders take authority for the community. For the disabled media activists, they identified service providers as quite problematic in this regard. One disabled media activist remarked: ‘When I turn on the radio or TV and hear disability being discussed … it’s quite often service providers that talk on behalf of us … that is not effective as service providers do not know our lived experience. What the media needs to do is engage with disabled people’s organizations directly’ (K). A trans media activist noted a very similar issue, commenting that frequently in the media, trans identities are consistently subjected to being framed as a source of debate, often without actually including any trans people and having cisgendered individuals speak in their place (H). That same activist also noted that in terms of telling trans stories, ‘production companies and TV stations tend to look towards specific trans individuals to provide overall representation for the whole community’ and this is can, overall be very misleading for the trans community (H).

As iterated above, many of the media activists noted that there were common points of change they would all like to see, however there were some differences in perspective related to vulnerabilities of particular communities. For example, disabled media activists noted that one of the significant changes they wanted to see was a transition away from ‘disability porn’ or ‘inspiration porn’, where disabled people are framed as sources of inspiration for able-bodied people on the basis of their life circumstance (G; K). One disabled activist noted: ‘This tragedy model of the “sob story” is damaging. Disabled people are just like non-disabled people, they’re husbands, they’re wives, they’re friends, they’re co-workers’ (K). A Traveller media activist noted that the Traveller community are always labelled or identified as a Traveller within a media piece. They underline how a radio producer was doing an item on families and wanted to include Traveller voices, but wanted to identify them as such. The activist noted that while Travellers want Traveller specific content in some instances, they also just want to be seamlessly included in other general content (L). As noted with each of these groups then, issues can emerge that vulnerabilize in very specific ways, which acutely affect that group of people. To that end, this demonstrates that inasmuch as there are a group of common approaches to diversity issues in the media, there are also specific community needs that must be taken into account.

Positioning changes for the future

The media activists provided a position and perspective on who they saw as central power brokers that could engender change. Some of the participants noted that they would like to see transformations from a top-down approach at government level, where ‘adequate resources and initiatives eventually trickle down to the community level’ (P). A neurodivergent activist noted that leadership was required, where specific bodies that dealt with the media, such as the BAI, Screen Ireland, along with the Irish government needed to take responsibility and ‘make a big push to get more engagement happening’ (M). A Black Irish activist similarly argued that any potential future change needs to come top-down from the government department responsible for media and communications: ‘a department led initiative will provide a model for people to follow and will have a knock on effect’ (B).

While many agreed that this top-down process was central to positioning change for the future, others felt that any kind of transformation needs to be led by community organizations who have expertise in the area and who work directly with communities. As one respondent noted: if we want to have leadership in this area, then the leaders actually need to be people from diverse communities … leaders need to be aware of the communities, their needs and it should be them leading the conversation and leading the charge (N). This idea of change being led from within affected communities was also dominant in the case of a disabled activist, who noted: ‘yes, we need to have leadership from government to make these changes and that’s what we would like to see, as that would get the likes of the BAI involved … but people like us and experts from within our communities also need to be in the room when decisions are being made in terms of how to lead on this’ (Q). One racial justice activist did note some of the drawbacks of this however when he noted that it should not always have to be the ‘responsibility of racial and ethnic minorities to do the work of white people’ (I) and that issues pertaining to racism and broader EDI in the media industry needs to be a collaborative effort and ‘not something that is devolved to the Black Irish person’ (I).

Many activists considered training and education to be a significant factor in the development of more sustainable and long-term EDI. As one neurodivergent activist noted, ‘these leaders in the industry, and all of these production companies, they need to be engaging with experts, training organizations and university courses to develop literacy around diversity issues’ (M). An LGBT activist similarly commented the potential effects of coalitions between media power brokers and education and training: ‘I think if those in positions of power in broadcasters and production companies actually took on some training, such as unconscious bias amongst many other things, then this might lead to some real change’ (C). A Black Irish activist pointed out that training and education would be particularly helpful in the media industry, particularly for media workers and leaders, to become aware of microaggressions: ‘I have been asked frequently by many in the industry, where am I from? When I say Ireland, they then press further and ask where am I really from? This implies that purely based on my perceived race and ethnicity that some within the industry would think that I was not born and raised here’ (A). Another racial justice activist commented on this trend of microaggressions, where they have observed that people in the media industry have noted and said to them that ‘they don’t see colour’ (D). To that end, the activists in these instances content that training and education could play a significant role as a power broker in ensuring change for the future. The activists saw this training and education in different ways however: some saw it as coalitions between universities and higher education institutions offering courses on EDI to the media industry (M), others saw it as an internal scheme that media organizations could develop, through hiring consultants or community groups to come into the organizations and educate (D; M), while others saw training and education around EDI as a compulsory requirement as part of a funding application to the likes of the BAI (O). While the pragmatics around how training and education could serve as a significant power broker varied across participants, there was a general consensus that this was an important means of inciting change.

Discussion & conclusion

This article has examined the point of view of media activists who campaign for greater participation in media industries in Ireland. The article found that activists were able to (i) identify inequalities in media representation; (ii) they were conscious of an imbalance between representation and participation in media; (iii) activists were clear on the changes needed to improve the situation and (iv) they understood that change would require a re-positioning in relation to power brokers in Irish media. A salient dimension of the findings is the correspondence across experiences of minorities despite significant differences between group identities. Being part of a minority seemed to generate a particular and shared experience of media that had more in common across groups than it had differences between them. This may be due to the fact that there has been so little diversification in Irish media that at this juncture it appears all groups interests are the same – simply getting some access to shape representation. Perhaps thereafter conflicting agendas may emerge, but essentially the findings point to how nascent and urgent the needs are to simply have some engagement from media industries with minoritized groups. For that reason there was also a unanimity to the types of change called for, with many of the activists looking for the same changes to be made to media access, representation and participation. Solutions named by activists included: more diversity in recruitment of workers; internships that lead to sustainable roles; participation in media through diversified contacts and using contributors from minoritized backgrounds without always linking content to their identity. Other macro level solutions to underrepresentation included changes to leadership, policy and increases in training and education.

However, the literature on EDI in Creative Industries has already flagged some of the tools and measures suggested by activists as potentially ineffective. For instance the British Film Institute (BFI) introduced Diversity standards in 2019. To to be eligible for BFI funding, film productions had meet diversity criteria in at least two of four production areas; (A) On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives; (B) Project Leadership and Creative Practitioners; (C) Industry Access and Opportunities and (D) Opportunities for Diversity in Audience Development (BFI 2019). The Diversity Standards while lauded internationally were are not without critics. Nwonka (2020) acknowledged that while the Standards were a significant intervention in policy approaches to diversity in the film industry, they have not successfully tackled the diversity problem. They are ‘not yet a robust enough model for responding to the intersectional and multi-dimensional nature of inequality in the industry’ (Nwonka 2020, 3). In a similar vein Henry and Ryder have noted ‘the big problem with all these training or leadership programmes is they implicitly and sometimes explicitly suggest that the reason why women or disabled people or Black people have not progressed is because we are not capable’ (2021: 41). While it remains to be seen whether EDI initiatives will generate change or not, a key contribution to that effort and literature on change is offered here, which is an idea that media activist participants in this research have made clear: any meaningful change that is to occur around EDI in the Irish media industry can only occur if the voices of those most affected are included in the conversations.

Critically the inclusion of minoritized groups needs to avoid a tokenistic appearance of consultation and instead move to genuine collaboration. What is needed going forward is that the Irish media industry needs to recognize media activists from disenfranchised and minoritized groups as a crucial resource for change and the industry needs to facilitate their voices and action through media production and involvement, particularly as Irish society continues to become more diverse. Additionally, academic research needs to continue to engage seriously with these under-researched groups at a granular level, to understand the specific issues that are effecting them, so that appropriate community-specific tools and measures can be developed for them in the broader media industry. In summary, EDI progress in media industries must bring the voices of the communities along with them, adopting a ‘nothing for us without us approach’, so that no policy or proposition should be decided by any organization or body without the full and direct participation of members of the group affected by that policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).