Abstract
Does media represent the diversity of our society, in step with the recognition in our society of the significance of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Following the 2021-22 and 2022 surveys, the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute conducted its third survey on on-screen representation in Japanese television programs in 2023.
Focusing on NHK and five major commercial broadcasters, our team conducted the following two surveys. 1) Meta data analysis of gender balance and representation of those who appeared on all television programs during a week in June, 2023. 2) Coding analysis of those who spoke or were quoted in weekday-evening national news & current affairs programs, during a week in June and a week in November, 2023. For the news analysis, we also looked at the representations of people with disabilities, the diversity of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and the geographical spread of locations at which the individuals spoke or were interviewed.
The representation of women and men in both surveys showed a similar trend to the previous 2021-22 and 2022 survey results. The ratios of women and men were roughly 4:6 in all programs and 3:7 in evening news programs. The imbalance stood out further—as in the previous surveys —when they were separated into age groups. The largest representations among women were in younger age groups: 20s for all programs and 19-39 for news programs. Men were predominantly middle-aged—the largest age group was 40s in all programs and 40-64 in news programs. The results confirmed again that television programs are centered on middle-aged to older men and younger women. This is, as previously noted, in distortion to Japan’s general population where women are greater in their total numbers compared to men, especially in older age brackets.
Furthermore, as in previous surveys, women in news were more likely to appear as an anonymous citizen while men appeared as the main subject of news as figures of authority. Men were represented more than 16 times than women as “politicians” and around 30 more times as “corporate executives.” The only categories in which women were represented more than men were “school students and pupils” and “parents and families.”
We saw similar results to the 2022 survey in other areas of representation in news: regarding the representation of people with disabilities—individuals we were able to identify as “people with disabilities” were a mere 0.3%, and “people who might have disabilities” were 1.1%—the numbers, even added together, were far below the national figure, which is approximately 9% of the total population.
In terms of racial/ethnic diversity, we opted, as in the previous survey, to code individuals with any audiovisual or narrative information that indicated they had non-Japanese, multi-racial, or indigenous backgrounds as not “Japanese,” irrespective of their citizenship. Still, “Japanese” made up over 75% out of all those counted, and “people with European backgrounds” were represented better than other groups, including “people with Asian backgrounds,” compared to their share of general population, both within and outside Japan.
We note that this analysis is made on a sample survey of limited number of days and that the coding analysis of news programs based on audiovisual and narrative cues may have overlooked or misinterpreted gender identities, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and/or disabilities of some individuals. However, the representations shown in our latest study are consistent with our previous surveys, which suggests that what we capture is roughly representative of the broader picture of what is broadcast, and close to what the audience actually see. That picture—the world of television—continues to be quite distant from our real world.
