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1-15-2020
#OSCARSSOWHITE MOVEMENT: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE #OSCARSSOWHITE MOVEMENT: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE
NEWS MEDIA IN THE CHANGING DIVERSITY OF THE ACADEMY NEWS MEDIA IN THE CHANGING DIVERSITY OF THE ACADEMY
AWARDS? AWARDS?
Lauren Brittney James
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James, Lauren Brittney, "#OSCARSSOWHITE MOVEMENT: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN
THE CHANGING DIVERSITY OF THE ACADEMY AWARDS?" (2020).
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#OSCARSSOWHITE MOVEMENT: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN THE
CHANGING DIVERSITY OF THE ACADEMY AWARDS?
by
Lauren James
A Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Major: Journalism and Strategic Media
The University of Memphis
May 2020
Abstract
The social media movement #OscarsSoWhite put a spotlight on racial diversity in the
film industry after nominations for the 2016 Academy Awards were announced with no people
of color included. This paper uses the agenda setting theory as a theoretical lens to critique the
media coverage of the movement and how prominent entertainment publications framed content
about racial diversity. It will take research from media studies and implement a qualitative
textual analysis of materials from news articles published by The New York Times
, Los Angeles
Times
, The Root
and media releases by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to
determine what issues became salient and how coverage was framed in a three-year period. This
paper will also discuss the overall climate of racial diversity in the film industry, social media’s
role in social change, and how the media make issues salient through agenda setting and agenda
building.
ii
Table of Contents
List of Tables iv
Introduction 1
Literature Review 3
Diversity in Mass Media 3
Social Media Activism 8
Agenda Setting Theory 11
Method 16
Sampling Procedure 17
Data Analysis 18
Findings 19
Coverage of #OscarsSoWhite and Diversity: By the Numbers 19
Racial Diversity: All signs point to ‘White Privileged’ Hollywood 21
More than Race: Overall Representation 26
Academy Award Voting System 28
TV Ratings 31
Activist Lens 34
Capitalist Lens 37
Discussion 39
Representation Matters 40
Diversity and the Bottom Line 46
Future Research and Limitations 51
Conclusion 52
References 54
iii
List of Tables
1. Percentage of Directors in 100 Top-Grossing Films: 2016-2017 6
2. Characters in 100 Top-Grossing Films: 2016-2017 7
3. Number of Articles Featuring #OscarsSoWhite from 2016-2019 19
4. Number of Articles Featuring “Diversity” from 2016-2019 20
5. Number of Articles Featuring AMPAS Strategies from 2016-2017 27
iv
Introduction
In 2019, actors Rami Malek, Regina King, and Mahershala Ali received Academy
Awards. This was a milestone achievement for racial justice in the film industry: It was the first
time in the history of the Academy Awards that 75% of the ceremony’s acting winners were
people of color (Nolfi, 2019). In Malek’s acceptance speech for “Best Actor” for his role as rock
band Queen front man, Freddie Mercury, the Egyptian actor said:
I think about what it would have been like to tell little bubba Rami that one day this
might happen to him, and I think his curly haired mind would have been blown. That kid
was struggling with his identity…we made a film about a gay man and an immigrant who
was unapologetically himself. It’s proof we’re longing for stories like this. (Huff, 2019,
para. 6)
A nomination for an Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences (AMPAS) is a high-level career achievement for any film professional (Chattoo,
2017), so the optics of this ceremony were important because three years prior, the major acting
categories for “Best Actor, “Best Supporting Actress,” and “Best Supporting Actor” lacked a
single person of color as a nominee, let alone a winner (Fallon, 2016). This gross negligence
was not lost on activists, especially April Reign. Shortly after the nominations were announced
in 2016, Reign reignited the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, which called out the Academy Awards
for its lack of diversity. This movement’s goal was for entertainment companies to be more
inclusive when hiring for film production and providing opportunities to talented designers and
artists from underrepresented groups of people (Reign, 2018).
1
This diversity problem was not a new issue in 2016 when Reign started tweeting
#OscarsSoWhite, however. From 2007 – 2013, only 15 non-white actors were nominated in the
four acting categories of the Academy Awards out of 200 total nominees, and between
2014-2016, not a single person of color was nominated (Berman, 2016). The hashtag brought a
focus to the lack of representation and began the mainstream news conversation around racial
diversity in Hollywood (Sinha & Trenard, 2017). These conversations included opinion pieces
and reports from prominent news outlets such as The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and
The Root
, which aimed to shed light on the lack of diversity in the Academy Awards.
In the movement’s fourth year in 2019, there have been gradual changes in the film
industry, which started under AMPAS President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. This included a vow to
double the number of women and people of color in AMPAS’ membership by 2020 and change
the voting structure so that members who have not voted for more than 10 years may be
ineligible to vote for nominees (Reign, 2018).
In response to the calls for a more diverse organization, AMPAS used media releases to
highlight and promote its inclusivity, which, combined with the vast coverage of the
#OscarsSoWhite movement in major media outlets across the country, have helped cast a
spotlight on the topic of racial diversity.
The goal for this study is to explore the salient issues within the news media’s coverage
of the movement, #OscarsSoWhite. To do so, the paper will use the agenda setting theory to
better understand the role of the news media in the changing diversity of the major awards show.
2
Literature Review
This literature review will explore three theoretical frameworks: first, this literature
review discusses research highlighting diversity in the mass media. Then, it will further examine
how social media has facilitated conversations and action around diversity. Third, the review
will highlight the agenda setting theory, as well as agenda-building theory and framing, and its
presence in the news and public relations.
Diversity in Mass Media
Diversity has a variety of definitions, but in broad terms, it refers to any perceived
differences among people, such as age, race, functional specialty, profession, sexual preference,
geographic origin, lifestyle, or profession (Dobbs, 1996). When it comes to on-screen diversity,
representation matters both on a micro and macro level. For example, when viewers who lack
exposure to diverse populations of people, what happens onscreen is often one way for viewers
to “glean information about the world” (Boboltz & Yam, 2017, para. 22). When this real-world
exposure is lacking, those mass mediated representations can often build, reinforce, or reject
personally held stereotypes, which are categorical assumptions about people based on their race,
gender, age, and/or other identities (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Plant & Devine, 1998).
Researchers have found that depictions of African-Americans as criminal and aggressive
in the media help reinforce anti-black prejudices in audiences (Oliver, 1999; Dixon & Lindz,
2000). Audiences, especially those with limited exposure, typically equated these
narrow-minded and negative media representations with the real world, which can lead to racial
minorities experiencing “less attention from doctors to harsher sentencing by judges, lower
likelihood of being hired for a job or admitted to school…” (Bell & Janis, 2011, p. 15).
3
In another study about black media stereotypes and its relationships to racial identity,
researchers build on this reinforcement of stereotypes and how it creates identities, finding that
that there is a strong relationship between messages being received through media about being
black and how people identify as black (Adams-Bass, Stevenson & Kotzin, 2014).
Another prominent fixture in films since the mid-20
th
century has been “whitewashing,” a
term defined as choosing a white male or female to portray a character who is originally of an
ethnic background (Bennett, 2015). Another definition notes it as:
A phenomenon in which a person of color/non-white person full integrates into white
culture and strips themselves of any non-white cultural affiliations; commonly used to
describe individuals who do not fall into their racial identity, but abide by social norms,
trends, and tendencies of white communities. (Yang, 2017, p. 5).
In addition to white actors and actresses playing a person of color, including the film
“Aloha,” with Emma Stone starring as a native Hawaiian woman, and “The Martian,” with
Mackenzie Davis playing a character who was Korean in the original novel (Bennett, 2015),
whitewashing is present in other ways. For example, Hollywood will oftentimes promote the
white savior complex, reinforcing the notion that only white bodies are able to save an
oppressed minority, ultimately emphasizing how “people of color can escape their predicament
of marginalization through the guidance and agency of lone white actors” (Cammarota, 2011, p.
243). This type of idea falsely represents people of color as helpless and without the capacity to
survive, which further affirms the ideology of white superiority (Yang, 2017).
Representation in media as it relates to identity is the crux of much research, including
psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s research about children and consumption of media.
4
In the 1940s, the couple conducted the landmark “Black Doll” experiment. The team took a
group of children between the ages of 3 and 7 and gave them two different dolls, which were
identifiable except for their skin color. What they found was that majority of the children chose
the white doll when asked questions such as “Which doll is good?” and “Which doll is prettier?”
(Lacina, 2016, para. 14).
The couple also testified in the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Ed, which
abolished segregation in public schools. Their results revealed that children, both white and
Black, internalized stereotypes early on by consuming popular media and entertainment (Lacina,
2016). Another major children’s study by Swindler (1986) echoed these findings, arguing that
the accumulated experience of exposure to media contributed to the cultivation of children’s
values, beliefs, and expectations, which help shape their identity that they will carry throughout
their life.
Identity formation in media was also explored by Lacan (2006), who suggested the
concept of the mirror stage of development. This begins with infants seeing themselves in the
mirror and is the first step to recognizing themselves as integrated, whole beings (Kondo, 2019).
Positive racial representation can help abolish internalized stereotypes, increase self-esteem, and
enhance awareness of the world (Evgenivna, 2017; Bell & Janis, 2011; Schiappa, Gregg, &
Hewes, 2005). And because of this, it’s critical that people see themselves mirrored in popular
culture such as TV and cinema (Kondo, 2019).
Strong racial representation in a film can also translate to better sales. Cox’s (1994)
Interactional Model of the Impact of Diversity on Individual Outcomes and Organizational
Effectiveness shows that when there is a diverse group in an industry or organization— in this
5
case, the film industry— it better represents society as a whole and has a better chance of
succeeding in the box office. Statistics reveal that the more inclusive a film is, the more money it
can make (Anderson, 2017). The Creative Artists Agency examined more than 400 theatrical
films released from January 2014 – December 2016 and detailed the ethnicity for the top 10
billed actors per movie— a total of 2,800 people. For the top 10 grossing movies in 2016, almost
50% of the opening weekend audience were racial minorities and seven of the top 10
highest-grossing movies screened to opening weekend audiences who were more than 50%
people of color (Anderson, 2017).
Diversity’s Limitations in Hollywood. Major studios offer cultural producers advantages
that smaller studios cannot afford. When it comes to screening films in theaters, major studios
have offices in regional markets, allowing it to maintain continuous contact with theater chains
across the country. Independent distributors are less strategically networked with theaters, and
have more difficulty marketing and gaining larger theatrical releases for its films. Because of
this, directors working primarily with independent studios experience disadvantages in theatrical
releases of their films compared to directors working mostly with major studios (Erigha, 2015).
This limited access to major studios presents a level of inequality for women and racial
minorities in the labor market, which includes directors.
Data from the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2018 and the Annenberg Foundation
and USC “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair? Gender, Race & Age of Directors across 1,100
Films from 2007-2017” report show a slight decrease in the percentage of black directors from
2016 to the end of 2017 in the top 100 grossing movies for each year (Table 1). However, there
was a slight increase in percentage of Asian directors in the same period (Choi, Choueiti, Pieper
6
& Smith, 2018). For this particular study, the statistics for only Black and Asian directors were
listed.
Table 1
Percentage of Directors in 100 Top-Grossing Films: 2016-2017
Race
2016
2017
Black
5.8%
5.5%
Asian
3.3%
4.6%
Data from the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2018 and the Annenberg Foundation
and USC “Inequality in 1,100 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity,
LGBT & Disability from 2007 – 2017” report also show the number of white, Black, and Asian
characters all decreased from 2016 – 2017, while the percentage of Latinx, defined as a
gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina, increased (Table 2). Together, a total of almost
30% of all speaking characters were from an underrepresented racial group, and there was some
fluctuation in the percentage of white, Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian and other races from 2007
to 2017. In fact, 2017 had the highest percentage of Hispanic/Latinx characters across the
sample, but had no major changes in 2007, 2011 or 2016. (Case, Choi, Choueiti, Pieper, &
Smith, 2018).
Table 2
Characters in 100 Top-Grossing Films: 2016-2017
Race
2016
2017
White
70.8%
70.7%
Black
13.5%
12.1%
7
Latinx
3.1%
6.2%
Asian
5.6%
4.8%
Given that 45% of movie ticket buyers and almost 39% of the U.S. population is made up
of those from the underrepresented racial groups, the mainstream film industry does not
represent the country and its film viewing audience (Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper, 2016). These
findings reveal that Hollywood films continue to whitewash storytelling, and fail to depict Black,
Latinx or Asian speaking characters on screen or behind the camera (Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper,
2016).
With social issues such as lack of racial representation in media like film, social media
has become a catalyst for change in the 21
st
century, offering a convenient way for audiences to
share their voices.
Social Media Activism
The concept of virality has become commonplace with many hashtag movements gaining
a lot of traction for social issues. Viral marketing can be defined as “electronic word-of-mouth
whereby some form of marketing message related to a company, brand or product is transmitted
in an exponentially growing way, often through the use of social media applications” (Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2011, p. 255). Virality can first be understood by its exponential growth pattern,
meaning that each individual shares the content with more than one person, which is similar to
that of other phenomena in business (e.g. compound interest) and physics (e.g. nuclear chain
reactions) (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011). The second element is the use of social media
applications, such as Facebook or Twitter. Kaplan and Haenlein (2011) said that social media
8
applications are suited for viral marketing as the community element embedded in the platforms
makes it easy to transmit the marketing message to a large number of people.
These platforms have made it convenient for users to launch cyberactivism movements
that have had a wide impact across the world, including #WomensMarch, #BlackLivesMatter,
#MeToo, #TakeaKnee and #OscarsSoWhite, helping spur conversations about social issues
involving sexual assault, women, and police brutality of people of color. The movements have
especially taken charge on the social media application Twitter, which has had a growing role in
facilitating revolutions (O’Reilly, 2005). The platform is particularly useful for social
movements to reach a degree of virality due to the platform’s unique features of always-on
persistence, light-weight scripting, open infrastructural base, and portable back-end interface
(O’Reilly, 2005).
The cyberactivism movements have thrived with the help of the Twitter hashtag, which
was first introduced in 2007 (Doctor, 2013) and is a way for activists and users across the
platform to coalesce around a topic. The hashtag is a string of characters preceded by the pound
symbol (i.e., #) and is used as a way to join public discussions (Huang, Thornton, &
Efthimiadis, 2010), categorize messages, or build communities around a topic of interest
(Laniado & Mika, 2010; Wang et al., 2011; Yang, Sun, Zhang, & Mei, 2012;). It has garnered
much media attention in the wake of strong efforts around special environmental, political and
social issues (Moscato, 2015). Using hashtags around specific social issues has resulted in what
journalists called “hashtag activism,” originally coined by The New York Times writer and
columnist David Carr (2012), which gives communicators a way to streamline their messaging
on Twitter.
9
Changing the World with a Hashtag. While the skeptics of social media’s efficacy with
protest movements call hashtag activism “armchair activism” or “slacktivism,” social media
actually assist these hashtag movements by empowering users to carry out the work of activists
(Kessler, 2012). The ability of Twitter hashtags to amplify information and ideas across the
platform helped activists and advocates of these movements with new media outreach
opportunities. The growing popularity and legitimacy of the movements invites more scrutiny
of online cases by traditional media and the media’s framing of Twitter’s ability to foster
ongoing dialogue positions it well for digital activism (Kessler, 2012).
For example, in 2011, Egyptian protests that led to the resignation of ex-President
Mubarak were organized through a network of web-based communication that involved heavy
use of Twitter and Facebook. While some dismissed the correlation between social media and
the protests, others viewed social media as important to current social movements in similar
ways to how the printing press and other media helped facilitate revolutions in the past (Ingram,
2011). Meraz and Papacharissi (2013) discovered that Twitter had turned into a platform for
news storytelling, which enabled collaboration of filtering and curating of news during the
Egyptian uprising. Lim (2012) said that social media in current and past uprisings in Egypt
afforded visibility to marginalized voices and enabled alternative narratives of dissention.
Another example of hashtag activism is the #MeToo movement. Although the term “Me
Too” was originally started in 2006 by Tarana Burke to raise awareness about the sexual assault
against women and girls of color, it gained mainstream traction in October 2017 as #MeToo
after alleged sexual misconduct in Hollywood (Beigi, Kambhampati, Manikonda, & Liu, 2018).
It began with accusations against producer Harvey Weinstein and continued with a large number
10
of executives, directors, and actors, including Kevin Spacey, CBS’ Les Moonves and Amazon
Studios’ Roy Price (Coyle, 2018). Actress Alyssa Milano offered a call to action in a tweet she
posted in 2017 that read, “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote
‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem” (Milano,
2017). Within 20 minutes of publishing, it had reached 10,000 replies and two days later, had
topped nearly 61,000 replies (Birnbaum, 2017). People from all over the world came forward to
share their personal stories and provide support to this online movement.
While Reddit and other social media platform users shared their own #MeToo
experiences, Twitter users were more likely to pursue others to continue to share their stories,
which helped continue the movement’s virality. Ultimately, social media, particularly Twitter,
has enabled individuals to see the importance of addressing stigmatized issues such as sexual
abuse (Beigi et al., 2018).
But these types of social issues do not just exist online and in social media spaces. The
news media often picks up content from what is trending online and going viral. For this study,
which explores how an online social movement was covered by the news media, it is important
to understand how media create salience and frame stories for consumption.
Agenda Setting Theory
In their seminal study about mass media’s coverage of a political campaign, McCombs
and Shaw (1972) hypothesized that “the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign,
influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues” (p. 177). They found that while
three presidential candidates placed different emphasis on different issues, the media exerted a
“considerable impact on voters’ judgments of what they considered the major issues of the
11
campaign” (p. 181). Since this landmark study, there have been more than 400 empirical studies
of agenda setting, many conducted during political campaigns (McCombs, 2004).
For example, a 1994 study about the Taipei mayoral election in Taiwan showed the
widespread occurrence of agenda setting in print media. At the time of election, there were three
TV stations serving the city and they were all controlled by the government’s KMT political
party. No agenda setting effects were found for TV news. However, major agenda setting effects
were found for the two daily independent newspapers in Taipei that were free from direct control
by the government or political party. It showed the direct comparison of the influence of open
(newspapers) and closed (government-controlled TV) media systems where all the political and
cultural factors are held constant (McCombs, 2004).
The United States has an open media system that allows a free flow of information
without specific biases, and The New York Times
is often considered one of the most influential
information organizations (Denham, 2014). The publication has a very specific role within the
news industry as being a premier agenda setter, as McCombs suggested:
A role now so institutionalized by the Associated Press (AP), the AP now alerts its
members each day to the agenda of stories scheduled for the next morning’s front page of
the [The New York] Times. It is the appearance on the front page of the Times that
frequently legitimates a topic as newsworthy. (2004, p. 113)
Agenda setting is more than the common assertion that the news tells us what to think
about. Additionally, the news frames the stories in a way that suggests to its viewers how they
should think and feel about issues. McCombs & Shaw (1993) argue that both the selection of
12
items for attention and the selection of frames for how to think about these objects are powerful
agenda setting roles.
Framing salient issues. Framing “is the selection of perceived reality in such a way as to
promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment
recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993, p. 52). It focuses not on which topics
are selected for coverage by the news media, but instead on the ways in which those issues are
presented and how problems are formulated for the media audience (Ghanem, 1997).
According to Entman (1993), frames call attention to some aspects of reality while
obscuring other elements, which might lead readers to have different reactions. There are many
complexities of the frame production process, which is dynamic in scope and involves frame
building (how frames emerge) and frame setting (the interplay between media frames and
audience predispositions) (De Vreese, 2005). Entman (1993) noted that frames have several
locations in the production process, including the communicator, the text, receiver, and the
culture. Framing is a highly complex process that can change in each iteration of media
messaging. In the case of foreign policy issues, frames originating from the public
administration could shape the frames used by the media, members of Congress, or the public
(Entman, 2004). Additionally, the reaction by the public to an initial frame can affect the
administration’s revised frames, showing that multiple people can influence the frame
production process (Borah, 2011).
Framing is often traced back to roots in psychology, specifically in the experimental work
of Kahneman and Tversky (1979, 1984). They looked at how different presentations of identical
decision-making scenarios influence people’s choices and how they evaluate the various options
13
that are available to them. As a construct, framing is about how journalists and other
communicators present information in a particular way that most resonates with existing
underlying schemas among their audience (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996).
While early research of agenda setting theory and framing focused on who sets the public
agenda, under what conditions, and how those issues within the agenda are framed, more
contemporary research focuses on the role of media subsidies (McCombs & Shaw, 1993), which
is a term that suggests information is a commodity that is responsive to surpluses and shortages
(Gandy, 1982). In turn, public relations professionals work to sway media attention by providing
content to journalists that decreases the amount of time and resources used during the
newsgathering process (Curtin, 1999). The effectiveness of these subsidies relies on numerous
factors, including newsworthiness, timeliness, and source credibility.
14
Agenda-building theory. In the 1980s, a new phase of agenda setting research emerged,
which focused on the sources of the media’s agenda (McCombs, 1994). Researchers began to
ask: “Who sets the media’s agenda?” (Cheng, 2014, p. 13). This question has stimulated the
research of agenda building, which has been established in the area of public relations (Cheng,
2014). Agenda building occurs in public relations when certain tactics are used to gain and
enhance salience in news media (Cabosky, 2014). While agenda setting examines the transfer of
issue salience from media to the public, agenda building in public relations explores the
reciprocal relations among the stakeholder groups in the process of salience formation, transfer,
and exchange (Hughes & Dan, 2009). Information subsidies come into play in agenda building
where if practitioners can obtain strong media placement of their subsidies, then they can
influence the media agenda, “which in turn can influence public opinion and the public agenda”
(Curtin, 1999, p. 54).
For example, when issues such as racial diversity and gender discrimination in the film
industry come to the forefront, a special interest group like American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) and Directors Guild could push the topics through social media or news releases in an
attempt to influence the news media to cover them. As the coverage grows, particularly from
large media outlets such as The New York Times, this virality makes its way back to the various
interest groups, which then produces a justification to continue advocating for the issue (Corbett
& Mori, 1999). This cycle allows issue salience to be formed, applied, and transferred across
various channels, which creates influence (Kiousis, Park, Kim, & Go, 2013). Developing this
salience is considered first-level agenda building, while second-level agenda building entails
how salient issues are framed (Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, McCombs, & Rey, 1997).
15
Although many studies have explored the lack of diversity in media overall (see:
Cappiccie, 2012; Choi, Choueiti, Pieper & Smith, 2018; Case, Choi, Choueiti, Pieper, & Smith,
2018), few have examined how news media have framed the social media movement
#OscarsSoWhite, which has helped shape the conversation about diversity in the Academy
Awards, one of the film industry’s most prestigious honors. Publications such as The New York
Times
and Los Angeles Times
are at the forefront of entertainment news, while The Root
is a
prominent Black online publication that provides analysis on issues that affect the Black
community. Each publication has been covering the social media movement since 2016.
Therefore, my research questions asked:
RQ1a: What issues did The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
make
salient through its coverage of #OscarsSoWhite?
RQ1b: How did The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
frame coverage
of #OscarsSoWhite?
RQ2a: What issues did the Academy Awards of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences make
salient through its response of #OscarsSoWhite?
RQ2b: How did the Academy Awards of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences frame its
response to #OscarsSoWhite?
Method
To understand which #OscarsSoWhite issues were most notable and how those issues
were framed, this research project utilized a qualitative textual analysis of materials from news
articles published by The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
, as well as media
releases published on the AMPAS website. This type of research is an in-depth interpretation of
16
media text and provides a deeper understanding of the text by taking a historical and holistic look
(Fürsich, 2009). Textual analysis has become a popular method for cultural researchers who are
interested in investigating media content and focuses on the underlying and cultural assumptions
of the content (Fürsich, 2009).
Sampling Procedure
Using the ProQuest news database US Newsstream, an advanced search included articles
in The New York Times
and the Los Angeles Times
with the keywords “Oscars” or "Academy
Award," and “Oscarssowhite" or "so white" or “diversity” or “inclusive” to show the relationship
between the award show with the social media movement and racial diversity that were
published between January 1 and March 1 in the years of 2016 – 2019 (the start of the
#OscarsSoWhite movement and concluding after most recent Academy Awards). These
publications were chosen due to its proximity to the film industry and focus. The New York
Times
, based in the major hub of New York City, has prominent entertainment coverage with
more than 4 million total subscribers across the country (Peiser, 2018), while the Los Angeles
Times
is the largest daily metropolitan newspaper centered around Hollywood, which has a daily
circulation of 1.4 million (Los Angeles Times, 2016). I conducted another search for articles in
The Root
for "#oscarssowhite" between January 1 and March 1 in the years of 2016 – 2019. The
online publication, The Root
, has a monthly readership of 6.5 million visitors and analyzes issues
in the Black community through commentary from Black thought leaders.
Additionally, there was a final search for articles in the “Oscars News” section on the
AMPAS website with the keywords “diversity” and “inclusive” in the headlines from 2016 –
17
2019. These keywords were chosen to observe the organization’s efforts to diversify
nominations.
Data Analysis
In order to explore how the news media were covering the social movement,
#OscarsSoWhite, and the organization’s response to the movement, open and axial coding of
published online articles was conducted to record and identify passages of text that were
connected by a common theme or idea.
Open coding is the part of the analysis that includes identifying, naming, categorizing and
describing the phenomena in the text (Scott & Medaugh, 2017). But the first step in answering
my research questions was to start with a preliminary soak, which involved reading the articles
and making note of interesting themes and trends. I then wrote down various points from each
article, and compiled and categorized the content into a qualitative codebook, which included
themes and keywords. This open coding allowed me to index the text into categories and
establish a “framework of thematic ideas about it” (Gibbs, 2007).
Axial coding is the second step of analyzing qualitative data for purposes of theory
development. It involved a degree of theoretical inference, which allowed me to modify and
shape the conceptual framework as more content was examined (Scott & Medaugh, 2017). This
resulted in a framework that could be synthesized and organized into more distinctly structured
categories and subcategories (Scott & Medaugh, 2017). I was able to relate these categories to
each other and examine causal relationships through a combination of inductive and deductive
reasoning (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). From here, themes related to the narrative around
#OscarsSoWhite were examined to see how they were framed.
18
Findings
The goal for this thesis was to explore the salient issues around #OscarsSoWhite and how
these issues were framed in three major publications: The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
,
and The Root
, as well as media releases from AMPAS. I collected data from the time periods
January 1 – March 1 from 2016 – 2019 with the keywords “Oscars” or "Academy Award," and
“Oscarssowhite" or "so white," or “diversity” or “inclusive,” which resulted in a universal
sample of more than 550 articles. After open coding 35% of the articles, I stopped seeing new
themes emerge, which left me with a final sample size of 195 articles.
My research questions RQ1a and RQ2a focused on agenda setting and which issues were
salient within the selected publications and AMPAS media releases. This required a broad level
of analysis of what topics the writers were attempting to build into the public agenda and overall
discourse. The findings indicated that the top four issues were: racial diversity, diversity other
than race, the voting system within the Academy Awards, and overall TV ratings for the annual
ceremony. Once I identified these salient issues, I was able to explore the second part of my
research questions (RQ1b and RQ2b), which addressed how the salient issues were framed. My
findings indicate two overarching frames were used to describe the issues: activism and
capitalism.
Coverage of #OscarsSoWhite and Diversity: By the Numbers
The news media actively covered the topic of racial diversity as it relates to
#OscarsSoWhite. The New York Times
focused mainly on the representation of whites, Blacks,
19
Asians and Latinx; while the Los Angeles Times
put a stronger spotlight specifically on Latinx;
and The Root
highlighted the Black and Asian communities.
I collected data until no more new themes were found among the searched articles. The
search yielded more than 559 articles from the three different publications, plus up to just four
media releases published on the AMPAS website, over a period of three years from January 1 –
March 1, 2016 – 2019. #OscarsSoWhite were posed in more than 201 total articles in The New
York Times
, 300 in the Los Angeles Times
, and 58 in The Root
. AMPAS just featured four total
media releases about the response to #OscarsSoWhite. Table 3 shows the breakdown in articles
and media releases published per year.
Table 3
Number of Articles Featuring #OscarsSoWhite from January 1 – March 1, 2016 – 2019
Publications
2016
2017
2018
2019
The New York Times
76
60
30
35
Los Angeles Times
150
57
36
57
The Root
36
16
2
4
AMPAS Media
Releases
2
1
0
1
As agenda setting theory suggests, for an issue to become salient, it relies on attention—
which for this study is the number of articles devoted to a particular topic. From 2016 – 2019,
other prominent entertainment publications such as the Hollywood Reporter
and Variety
covered
racial diversity in just a handful of articles, while The New York Times
and Los Angeles Times
20
published numerous articles about diversity as it related to #OscarsSoWhite, implying a high
level of salience for the issues of diversity and representation in the film industry (see Table 4).
Table 4
Number of Articles Featuring “Diversity” from January 1 – March 1, 2016-2019
Publications
2016
2017
2018
2019
The New York Times
50
25
11
19
Los Angeles Times
107
38
21
18
The Root
36
16
2
4
Hollywood Reporter
4
7
4
2
Variety
13
10
6
1
Reporters covering my first theme of racial diversity often used conversations around
white privilege and the lack of opportunities in Hollywood to address the umbrella issue of racial
diversity. The news content mainly focused on the Black community, but also included
acknowledgments of struggles facing the Asian and Latinx communities.
Racial Diversity: All signs point to ‘White Privileged’ Hollywood
A majority of the articles in The New York Times
and Los Angeles Times
agreed that there
was a lack of diversity in not just the awards show, but in the film industry, overall. In a 2016
Los Angeles Times
article, actor Mark Ruffalo said that this diversity problem “isn’t just the
Academy Awards,” but “the entire America system is rife with white privilege racism”
21
(Rottenberg, 2016, para. 12). The author Josh Rottenberg also said in the article that “this
Oscar’s season has become a painful referendum on its failure to reflect the world around it”
(2016, para. 13). Another actor, Danny DeVito, echoed Ruffalo’s sentiment in
a Root
article,
saying:
We are living in a country that discriminates and has certain racial tendencies
which—racist tendencies—so sometimes, it’s manifested in things like this and it’s
illuminated, but just generally speaking, we’re a racist—we’re a bunch of racists. It’s
unfortunate that the entire country is a racist country. This is one example of the fact that
even though some people have given great performances in movies, they weren’t even
thought about. (Callahan, 2016, para. 3)
Decades before the #OscarsSoWhite movement, AMPAS was embroiled in a similar
controversy after Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie “The Color Purple” received 11 Oscar
nominations but took home zero golden statues (Anderson, 2016). Margaret Avery, nominated
for her supporting role in the movie, said the problem reaches higher than the Academy:
We need to be able to greenlight different kinds of films. They say it's all based off box
office— they want to make money. But there are ‘black films' that make money, and
once something makes money that they thought wouldn't, you can't make it stop…but if
it's five men making the decisions and they're all in the same camp, it's going to be all of
the same kind of films [in the theaters]. (Anderson, 2016, para. 12)
The Root
’s Yesha Callahan took a strong stance for the #OscarsSoWhite movement and
racial diversity in Hollywood, saying that the movement rings true because its members are “so
white and so male” (Callahan, 2016, para. 7). She continued:
22
When the majority of your members are old white men, they won't understand movies
like 'Beasts of No Nation,’ but they will sit through a movie like ‘The Revenant’ and
throw it all the nominations they can muster. They'll leave out Ryan Coogler in the best
director category for ‘Creed,’ only to nominate Sylvester Stallone for an Oscar for the
same movie. (Callahan, 2016, para. 6)
This racial diversity issue also included Latinx, which the Los Angeles Times
focused on
in several articles. One 2016 article focused on a “film brownout,” with the author saying the
conversation about #OscarsSoWhite focused too much on the Black community and left out the
nation’s largest minority group: Latinx. Also in this article, Chon Noriega, a professor in the
UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, pointed to the 1991 film "Grand
Canyon," which was set in Los Angeles and dealt with issues of race and class but had no Latinx
standouts. He said it was as if “only whites and African Americans have a subconscious, only
they dream. It just doesn't look like L.A. Where did the other half of the city go?” (Becerra,
2016, para. 19).
These articles suggested one of the ways Hollywood flaunts white privilege happened
through a practice called “whitewashing,” or casting white actors as nonwhite characters. For
example, the classic musical “West Side Story” from the 1960s whitewashed its Puerto Rican
characters with Russian-American actress Natalie Wood and Greek-American actor George
Chakiris (La Jeunesse, 2018). Additionally, the movie “American Drug Lord,” which is still in
development, gave the starring role of Mexican American drug cartel kingpin Edgar “La Barbie”
Valdez to the white British actor Charlie Hunnam (Becerra, 2016). The findings reveal that
23
Hollywood films continue to whitewash storytelling and fail to depict Latinx, Black and Asian
speaking characters on screen or behind the camera (Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper, 2016).
While the social media movement, #OscarsSoWhite, emerged in 2016 as a demonstration
of the lack of diversity in Oscar nominations, articles suggested the movement was more of a
reflection of the film industry as a whole. The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
got to the core of the problem and pinned much of the diversity problem on the executives at the
largest film companies who are setting the tone for the industry. In a 2016 New York Times
article, writer Manohla Dargis said:
A lot of this is about who's cutting the checks, running the companies, calling the shots.
Mostly, as we know, those people are white men, and while I have no complaint against
them as a class of people (some of my best friends are white guys), none of this will
change until they actively help bring about the necessary change or until the country's
demographics force them out. (Dargis et. al, 2016, para. 26)
The consensus among The New York Times
writers was that the slate of all-white
nominees in 2016 not only exposed the “myopia” of the nominating body, but also the deep
biases of the industry, itself (Dargis et. al, 2016, para. 6).
Racial diversity: Entertainment’s lack of opportunities. Some writers looked to a
larger problem in entertainment: minimal job opportunities for minorities onscreen and behind
the camera. Longtime director Spike Lee said:
As I see it, the Academy Awards is not where the 'real' battle is. It's in the executive
office of the Hollywood studios and TV and cable networks. This is where the
24
gatekeepers decide what gets made and what gets jettisoned to 'turnaround' or [the] scrap
heap. (Ng, 2016, para. 18)
Another artist echoed the sentiment, saying that there needs to be more opportunities for
artists to do their craft. After the 2016 Oscars broadcast, the group Public Enemy took offense to
the Academy Awards’ use of their politically charged song, “Fight the Power.” Member Chuck
D said:
The song Fight The Power is beyond me & the crew. The point of the song is a call to
making change eventually not just applauding the thought. Art speaking. Fight The
Power. Make change. Demand respect. Do your own awards RIGHT & give indie artists
& actors a chance to make a LIVING. (Callahan, 2016, para. 4)
Chuck D also said that the Oscars have always been “white” and that they need “Black
communities to support the arts as much as we do sports” (Callahan, 2016, para. 5). Even
President Barack Obama chimed in on the debate, saying:
As a whole, the industry should do what every other industry should do, which is to look
for talent and provide opportunity to everybody. I think the Oscar debate is really just an
expression of this broader issue of, are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair
shot? (Eromsele, 2016, para. 6)
After the big “Best Picture” Oscar win for the movie “Moonlight” in 2017, the Los
Angeles Times
focused on the many more steps that still need to be taken for inclusiveness at the
Academy, saying the film industry, itself, needs to be more inclusive. Author Tre’vell Anderson
said the industry needs more people outside of what Hollywood traditionally considers worthy to
25
be given a chance to lead a movie, direct, write, be sound mixers, cinematographers, and
production and costume designers. (Anderson & Yamato, 2018)
More than Race: Overall Representation
While the main focus of the movement rested on racial diversity, many articles in the
three publications expanded its scope of the diversity problem to include women, people with
disabilities, and the LGBTQ communities, with some even saying that to focus so narrowly on
Black inclusivity was missing the point that Hollywood has an overall diversity issue. Franklin
Leonard in The New York Times
article said:
The OscarsSoWhite hashtag has to be viewed as a synecdoche for ‘industry so white.’ If
you view #OscarsSoWhite as being only about more nominations for Black actors at the
Oscars, then you totally missed the point, and a lot of people did miss the point.
(Rutenberg, 2017, para. 10)
The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism publishes annual reports
on diversity in the film industry and The New York Times
and The Root
made the findings the
basis of a select group of articles from 2016 – 2019. Writer Mike McPhate, in a 2016 New York
Times
article, said women were heavily outnumbered by men behind the camera, making up
about 15% of directors, about 29% of writers and about 23% of series creators, the study found
(2016).
One of the annual diversity studies was also featured in a Root
article, which noted from
the report that men were two times more likely than women to have speaking roles and between
2014 – 2017, only about 1% of the speaking roles were LGBTQ characters (Leon, 2019).
Additionally, The Root
focused on other statistics behind the camera— of the 1,200 top-grossing
26
films between 2007 – 2018, only 4.3% of all directors were women with a minute number of
those women of color. “Intersectionality played a role here, too, because only five were directed
by Black women, three by Asian women and one by a Latina,” the author said (Stidhum, 2019,
para. 8). The Root
’s Tonja Renee Stidhum blamed Hollywood for the inclusivity problem,
saying:
Women, in general, were given the shitty end of the 2018 top 100-grossing movie stick,
with only four women sitting in the director’s chair in this high moneymaking group.
Only one of those four was black: Ava DuVernay, for A Wrinkle in Time. Do better,
Hollywood. (Stidhum, 2019, para. 6)
The lack of women directors was a focus in another article in The New York Times
by
Cara Buckley. In 2019, the Independent Spirit Awards, which are held every year the night
before the Academy Awards, women took three of the five Best Director nominations. By
comparison, since 1929, only five women have received “Best Director” nominations overall and
just one has won with Kathryn Bigelow taking the award in 2009 for “The Hurt Locker.”
Buckley (2019) continued, “The significance of Bigelow’s achievement cannot be overstated, yet
it has had a curious distorting effect on the perceptions some show business people have about
the number of female directors working on major films” (para. 5).
While the 2017 Academy Awards bolstered its nominee list in terms of diversity with the
movie “Moonlight” taking the top honor of “Best Picture,” Reign, founder of #OscarsSoWhite,
said it’s just one night that showed progress and there is still a lot more work to do.
“#OscarsSoWhite remains relevant because there are still so many stories from traditionally
27
underrepresented communities that need to be told” she said (Rottenberg, 2017, para. 6). Writer
Wesley Morris of The New York Times
added to this sentiment, saying:
There’s demonstrable proof that North America wants to see itself—more of itself—in its
entertainment. And the Academy—which is working to add more women, young people
and color to its ranks—should want to see more of its ideal self at the Oscars. (Dargis,
Morris & Scott 2016, para. 11)
Academy Award Voting System
In answering RQ2a, which asked what issues did AMPAS make salient through its
response of #OscarsSoWhite in its media releases, the findings showed that when the
#OscarsSoWhite movement went viral, it caused the Academy to reflect on the racial diversity of
its membership and voting body. With a lack of diversity, the organization radically overhauled
its voting and recruitment process in a bid to double its female and racially diverse membership
by 2020. The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times,
and The Root
highlighted the new strategies
and recruitment process numerous times from 2016 – 2017—during President Cheryl Boone
Isaacs’ term as president— which shows that AMPAS had prominent media placement of their
media releases. Table 5 shows the number of articles featuring AMPAS strategies.
Table 5
Number of Articles Featuring AMPAS Strategies from January 1 – March 1, 2016-2017
Publications
2016
2017
The New York Times
22
0
Los Angeles Times
43
9
The Root
2
1
28
Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said, “I am both heartbroken and frustrated
about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big
change” (Ng, 2016, para. 6). In a 2016 article, The Root
staff reflected on this as well, writing:
One of the major changes will require that the voting status of new and current members
be reviewed every 10 years. Voting status for those who haven’t been active in the film
industry for a decade could be revoked. The academy will also be adding three more seats
to its 51-person board; new board members will be nominated by the president. (The
Root Staff, 2016, para. 3)
These changes were prominently posted on the AMPAS website in an article, “Academy
Takes Historic Action to Increase Diversity” on January 22, 2016, just eight days after the
all-white Oscar nominations were announced. In the news article, Isaacs said, “The Academy is
going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up. These new measures regarding
governance and voting will have an immediate impact and begin the process of significantly
changing our membership composition” (AMPAS Publicity, 2016, para. 2).
AMPAS also announced on its website an addition to the Academy’s 51-seat board after
the 2016 ceremony on March 15, plus resolutions on active voters. Isaacs said while she’s proud
of the steps they have taken to increase diversity, she knows there is more to do as they move
forward to make the Academy a more inclusive organization (AMPAS Publicity, 2016).
29
Enhancing nothing: Counterarguments to the AMPAS’ inclusion efforts. In a select
few articles, writers in The New York Times
and Los Angeles Times
structured their articles
around opposing viewpoints from audiences about #OscarsSoWhite. Some were not optimistic
about the strategies to diversify the nominations in the Academy Awards, including one reader in
The New York Times
article “Readers Respond: Oscars So White? or Oscars So Dumb?” who
said:
It's ridiculous to think I, or any individual voter, is going to vote for a performer because
he's white or black or whatever. It is the performance we vote for. These comments make
it sound like 'the Academy' chooses but 'the Academy' is made up of several thousand
individual votes. There is no way that can be controlled or corrupted. (McDermott, 2016,
para. 20)
Another reader agreed that the film industry lacks diversity to a troubling degree, but the
real culprit is income and education inequality. “The Oscar nominations reflect the current state
of the industry, not a racist nomination process” (McDermott, 2016, para. 13). In a Root
article,
Isaacs acknowledged that a change in diversity wasn’t going to happen overnight, but the
Academy realized that it needs to work faster and do more (Callahan, 2016). Still, the new
strategies to diversify in 2016 caused much tension within the Academy because of the
restrictions. In a 2016 New York Times
article, author Buckley said:
The upshot of this controversy is that Academy members are on the defensive and are
also angry because the Academy leaders have announced its plans to strip inactive
members of their voting privileges. (para. 10)
30
While much of content about the #OscarsSoWhite movement rested on the issues of
racial diversity, overall representation, and the voting system of the Academy, some writers,
rather, looked to the effects of this movement on the actual TV ratings of the annual ceremony.
TV Ratings
The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
emphasized the TV ratings for
the annual Academy Awards ceremony in late February and how the lack of diversity might have
an effect on overall viewership. From January 1 – March 1, 2016 – 2019, The New York Times
mentioned TV ratings in 16 articles, while Los Angeles Times
highlighted the ratings in 58
articles.
In a 2018 Los Angeles Times
article, writer David Ng said if other prominent
entertainment industry figures, in addition to director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith,
joined the boycott of the 2016 Academy Awards, it had the potential to spoil Hollywood's annual
showcase event. And should a large number of African American viewers tune out, it could dent
ratings for the Oscars telecast (Ng, 2016). "It has such high ratings most years, so the image of
Hollywood that the Academy presents is at stake," said Ana-Christina Ramon, assistant director
and associate researcher at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies (Ng,
2016, para. 3).
Also at the height of the movement in 2016, Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent figure in the
Black community, “promised wrath on advertisers of the Oscars telecast if they continued to
support an awards ceremony that had no black nominees” (Barnes & Cieply, 2016, para. 6). He
continued, "We know you couldn't break your contracts this year, but we are putting you on
31
notice: If you want to have another all-white Oscars, we will cut you off” (Barnes & Cieply,
2016, para. 6).
The fall and rise of ratings. The 2016 ceremony hosted by comedian Chris Rock saw
the TV ratings fall by nearly 8% from the previous year’s telecast to 34.4 million. The New York
Times
writers Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply noted that reasoning for the drop in the ratings
is maybe that Black viewers tuned elsewhere because they were “upset about a second straight
year of all-white acting nominees” (2016, para. 4).
In 2017, the Academy Award ceremony TV ratings fell even more to 32.9 million
viewers, which was the second lowest total since Nielsen started tracking viewership in 1974.
John Koblin of The New York Times
pointed out several reasons for the low ratings, including
#OscarsSoWhite (2017). “Last year, the controversy surrounding #OscarsSoWhite, a movement
on social media aimed at the lack of diversity among the nominees, led to speculation that
viewers could be turned off by the prospect of an hours-long civics lecture” (Koblin, 2017, para.
8).
Despite the previous year’s lackluster ratings, the Oscars website promoted its ad sales
for the following year in 2018, selling out its entire ad inventory two weeks before the
ceremony— the fastest sellout in history, writer Steve Dove said in the “ABC Sells Out All Ads
for 90th Oscar Telecast in Record Time” media release (2018). “The network is celebrating
record revenue up high single-digits versus last year, marking another milestone for the telecast,”
he continued (Dove, 2018, para. 1).
Ultimately, given that AMPAS is a business and it takes money to run the yearly
ceremony; if the viewership is low, it could impact the ad sale revenue. In 2015, a 30-second TV
32
spot reached $2 million. And that year, alone, ABC made $110 million in ad fees from its
broadcast of the ceremony. The 2016 yearly financial report for the Oscars showed that the
ceremony that year cost nearly $22 million to run, which is supplemented by advertising revenue
(Pulver, 2017).
Still, TV ratings dropped even more in the 2018 telecast— to 26.5 million viewers—
which was a 20% drop versus the previous year and was an all-time low for the awards show
(Koblin, 2018). Koblin attributed the low ratings in The New York Times
article to possibly
“lackluster movies” (para. 8) and a viewership trend across the board with other award shows
such as the Grammys and Screen Actors Guild (Koblin, 2018).
The host-less 2019 ceremony saw a rating boost for the first time in five years with a
12% increase over 2018’s numbers to 29.6 million. Los Angeles Times
writer Stephen Battaglio
(2019) credited ABC’s determination to have a faster-paced telecast to the increased ratings, as
well as suspense surrounding the “Best Picture” category. Lauren Zalaznick, media consultant
and former network executive, said in the article that, “the range of movies honored gave the
show a ‘big tent’ atmosphere that the telecast has not had in recent years” (Battaglio, 2019, para.
10), which hinted at the highly diverse nominee pool. There was no mention of #OscarsSoWhite
and its possible effect of TV ratings in previous years’ ceremonies.
The findings from this thesis suggest that journalists focused on four salient topics when
discussing #OscarsSoWhite issues. Further analysis identified that these issues were framed in
one of two ways:
These issues were framed by the writers of The New York Times
, Los Angeles
Times
and The Root
using an activist lens by illustrating how representation in films was
important. Another popular frame was using capitalism to justify actions, which focused on the
33
backlash of #OscarsSoWhite and the financial implications of minimal diversity in the film
industry.
Activist Lens
After identifying these salient issues in the sample size, one of the frames that emerged
was promoting diversity for social reasons, which I’ll refer to as using an “activist lens.” In
many of the articles, writers showed how this lack of diversity in the nominations affected
audiences and how better representation in films was beneficial for society.
Activist reaction to #OscarsSoWhite. Most of the writers in the sample size supported
the #OscarsSoWhite movement, saying that it shed light on the systemic lack of diversity at the
Oscars and in the film industry as a whole. For example, in a New York Times
article, writer
Buckley noted that diverse voices providing diverse narratives is more important than ever:
We’ve been fed narratives from an overwhelmingly white male perspective since
Hollywood began. Isn’t it high time for some alternate narratives, at the very least? Isn’t
the purpose of art to jostle, broaden and challenge our worldview? (2016, para. 13)
The prominent online publication The Root
provides a Black perspective that appeals to a
wide range of readers, including Latinx and white. The publication showcased a strong opinion
about the Academy, but offered different viewpoints and counterpoints to the #OscarsSoWhite
movement. For example, writers focused on prominent actors and industry professionals who
opposed #OscarsSoWhite, including actress Charlotte Rampling as well as director Lee Daniels,
who said in an article, “Go out and do the work. Oscars so white! So what? Do your work. Let
your legacy speak and stop complaining, man. Are we really in this for the awards?” (Callahan,
34
2017, para. 2). Writer Yesha Callahan, one of The Root
’s frequent writers about the movement,
countered in the article with:
If Hollywood isn't giving the same number of actors of color a shot as it does for every
other Ben Affleck-like or Jennifer Lawrence-like person who instantly becomes the ‘next
big thing,’ then how does [Lee] Daniels suppose these actors actually start to create a
legacy? (Callahan, 2017, para. 6)
Most writers of these publications agreed that #OscarsSoWhite has spurred outrage and
inspired many to speak up about the inequalities in the film industry. Reader Okema T. Moore
said in a 2016 Root
article:
The acknowledgment of who and what we are in this industry, and the fact that we've
consistently and literally built this industry on our blood, sweat and talent, then there's a
need for an #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. We're not the ones in the forefront. (Young, 2016)
Progress in representation. Over the years, the content about overall representation at
the Oscars gave a strong indication that the publications were seeing progress through
representation. From 2017 – 2019, more people of color were included in the Oscars nominations
and behind the camera, and my sample publications demonstrated a more positive outlook with
keywords such as “breakthrough” and “step forward.” In particular, Josh Rottenberg in the Los
Angeles Time
s focused on the records that were broken in the 2017 Oscars ceremony by
highlighting the high number of awards given to African Americans, including the acting
categories, which showed the progress can be made through increasing diversity through
on-screen representation (2017). He said:
35
The diversity of Sunday night's winners― which also saw Ali become the first Muslim
actor ever to win an Oscar― was seen by many as a sign that, as academy President
Cheryl Boone Isaacs told the crowd at the Dolby Theatre, the film industry is ‘becoming
more inclusive and diverse with each passing day.’ (Rottenberg, 2017, para. 9)
The Root
framed the 2017 Oscar nominations as a step in the right direction of inclusivity
in the film industry, saying “this year’s Academy Awards nominations featured so much
blackness, some racist trolls on Twitter might just start calling the Oscars the BET Awards”
(Adams, 2017, para. 1). A New York Times
writer even touted the 2017 nominations as
#OscarsSoBlack (Bruni, 2017). In a majority of the articles published, #OscarsSoWhite was
described as a success, crediting activist April Reign as making the problem realized on a
grander scale, because as the author Ronda Racha Penrice of The Root
said, this lack of diversity
“is no anomaly” (Penrice, 2017, para. 1).
Much of the movement centered on the Black community, but as the years passed, the
focus also shifted to the Latin and Asian populations. After two years of #OscarsSoWhite, the
2018 Academy Award nominations showed promise with 12 African Americans nominated.
However, it was the sixth year in a row where no Latinx people were nominated
(Tseng-Putterman, 2018). Many writers lamented that Hollywood needs to do better by Latinx
and nonblack Asian Americans. #OscarsSoWhite activist Reign, in particular, said there is still a
lot of work that needs to be done. She added, “Our work to confront Asian-American and Latinx
media underrepresentation—and the countless violence our communities face outside of
Hollywood—is cut out for us. But let’s be clear: It is our work” (Tseng-Putterman, 2018, para.
17).
36
Capitalist Lens
In addition to the activist lens, a counter frame emerged that focused on how increasing
diversity would benefit the bottom line, which I refer to as a “capitalist lens.” This frame
included conversations about the backlash against #OscarsSoWhite for the Oscars brand and the
financial implications of diversity in films, mainly focusing on box office sales and viewership
of the annual ceremony.
The backlash. At the start of the movement in 2016, writers framed the lack of diversity
in the nomination pool of the Oscars as damage to the brand and something that would
negatively impact the 2016 ceremony. For instance, Los Angeles Times
writer Josh Rottenberg
said in a 2016 article leading up to the Oscars ceremony that year that:
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences— faced with an all-white slate of
acting nominees for the second year in a row― has struggled to navigate a controversy
that has divided its membership and damaged its image. And now, many expect it will
take some of the glitz off Sunday night's Oscar ceremony. (2016, para. 6)
The New York Times
writer Buckley, one of the prominent writers of diversity for the
publication, also painted a somewhat uncertain picture of the Academy and its efforts to become
more inclusive saying the strategies might be quick fixes, but are nothing substantial:
For all the on-camera embraces of diversity, the changes the Academy has announced—
along with doubling its diversity push, it wants to weed inactive members out— continue
to have multiple members of the organization, publicists included, on the defensive, and
seething. Whether the academy's shift will mean more diverse movies are made— and
recognized— remains to be seen, as does whether this year's diversity ‘conversation’ will
37
have legs. (2016, para. 11)
In a select few articles, writers of The New York Times
and Los Angeles Times
structured
their articles around a variety of viewpoints about #OscarsSoWhite. In a 2016 New York Times
article, author Marie Tae McDermott put a spotlight on readers’ views of the social media
movement with many saying that it was not a worthy cause and that the nominations were
correct that year. One reader said that films that year starring Black actors were simply not
“worthy of being nominated for the ‘best’ of anything” (McDermott, 2016, para. 8). Some said
that the controversy reflected a wider problem of race and diversity in the country while others
marked AMPAS as an infallible institution and even defended the nominations in 2016, rallying
behind #OscarsSoRight (McDermott, 2016).
The prominent online publication The Root
showcased a strong opinion about the
Academy, which signaled higher accountability for an organization such as AMPAS, but offered
different viewpoints and counterpoints to the #OscarsSoWhite movement. A select group of
actors and directors have shared the same views of these readers, including Academy
Award-winning actor Michael Caine who suggested that “Black people need to be more patient
and maybe they’ll get an Oscar, too” (Callahan, 2016, para. 2). Callahan said in response to
Caine’s viewpoint, “Patient? Huh? Tell that to Spike Lee, who recently received a ‘freebie’ from
the academy after it bypassed many of his films” (Callahan, 2016, para. 3).
An interesting point that actress Jada Pinkett Smith said in another Root
article was that
AMPAS’ strategies to diversify their voting body implies that Black people only vote Black,
which is not the case, and “…it’s not just about having more black voters” (Smith quoted in
Eromosele, 2016, para 4). She continued, “The Academy as a whole, we all need to, as human
38
beings, get to know each other, expand our education about everyone” (Eromosele, 2016, para
4).
There is a clear divide in high art and mass art as it relates to films, and many writers
deferred to studio executives as leaning toward making big money at the box office as the
ultimate goal than creating film for social change. The New York Times
writer Manohla Dargis
said:
The major studios tend to mimic this divide, as we know. They roll out the blockbusters
in the summer and their prestige films in the fall. Little gold statues and glowing reviews
are nice, but box-office domination is the name of the industry game. (Dargis et. al, 2016,
para.12)
But despite a somewhat better representation in the 2017 Academy Awards, writers said
it didn’t change the lack of progress being made in the ranks of the studio executives, the low
number of female directors, and that consequences for bad behavior “still seem to go by a sliding
scale based on whom your connections are or your potential at the box office” (Rutenberg, 2017,
para. 8).
Discussion
This study adds to the limited body of scholarship regarding how diversity has been
addressed in the news media since the #OscarsSoWhite went viral in 2016. Between 2016 –
2019, media covered #OscarsSoWhite and focused on four salient issues: racial diversity,
diversity other than race, the voting system within the Academy Awards, and overall TV ratings
for the annual ceremony.
39
As the coverage of the movement grew, particularly from large media outlets such as
The New York Times
and the Los Angeles Times
, this prominence made its way back to the
movement founder, which then produced a justification to continue advocating for the issue and
even helped ignite changes at the Academy and its voting system (Corbett & Mori, 1999). This
agenda setting cycle allowed the issue salience to be formed, applied, and transferred across
various channels, which created influence with the Academy, as well as TV and movie actors,
and audiences (Kiousis, Park, Kim, & Go, 2013).
This news coverage in The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
prominently focused on how the diversity problem at the Oscars is a systemic problem in
Hollywood, looking to commentary from audiences, professionals within the film industry—
including directors, actors and actresses, and designers— plus executives and even professors
who specialize in diversity. Content demonstrated why representation of all races and
populations is so important; promoted the idea of “inclusiveness” of all races and populations;
and highlighted that ultimately, diversity is a “journey”—something that doesn’t happen
overnight.
Representation Matters
My findings indicated the importance of representation of all people was a popular theme
with a majority relaying how critical it was for everyone to see people like themselves on the
screen. According to Stuart Hall, identity is a “moveable feast”—formed and transformed
continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems that
surround us (1987). In addition to the Black community, many articles focused on how Asians
and the Latinx population, considered a large movie-going audience, are very underserved in
40
terms of stories they can relate to, and why it’s so important for overall representation in films.
Becerra said that “there is something powerful about seeing people on the big or small screen
who look like you. That is universal to human beings” (2016, para. 18). This supports the idea
that when real-world exposure is lacking, those mass mediated representations can often build,
reinforce, or reject personally held stereotypes (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Plant & Devine, 1998).
Media diversity remains one of the most consequential—and still often ignored—factors
shaping how all Americans view themselves and each other (Morgan, 2019). Articles stressed
that diversity enhanced the film industry and mainly the Academy Awards— that diversity of
stories, backgrounds and demographics bolstered ideas and helped AMPAS better relate to its
diverse audiences. For example, filmmaker Ava DuVernay said in a 2016 Los Angeles Times
article:
This work needs to be done so people of color can see themselves as real people on
screen. That's an issue of survival, essential to our personhood and our humanity and our
dignity. It has nothing to do with those hashtags. (Whipp, 2016, para. 21)
But while there has been much progress in TV and film to showcase the varied
perspectives of storytellers, studies still show that biases in media portrayals continue to
“perpetuate attitudes toward minority communities and fuel our country’s simmering divisions”
(Morgan, 2019, para. 4).
The effects of whitewashing. In addition to overall representation, there was special
attention paid to the effects of whitewashing in film, and how it reinforced stereotypes of various
ethnicities. In many instances, journalists argued for having a white person play a character of a
different race shouldn’t be an issue—it should be cast regardless of race and the casting should
41
be “colorblind” (Lowrey, 2010). Another argument is that financial considerations typically take
“center stage” when casting for a major film and that studios do not aim to be discriminatory
(Lowrey, 2010, p. 4). In a select few articles, writers noted how this whitewashing ultimately
hurt marginalized populations such as the Latinx and Asian communities, who are “underserved
in terms of stories and characters they relate to” (Barnes, 2018, para. 11).
This whitewashing seems to have an effect on representation in films, which in turn, has
affected representation for these communities in award shows like the Oscars. In fact, a 2018
article noted startling statistics within these communities, saying that this makes the sixth year in
a row that no Latinx actors have been nominated for an acting Academy Award, and only 1% of
Oscar nominations have gone to Asian actors in the past 89 years (Tseng-Putterman, 2018).
This lack of representation has been commonplace in the film industry, but it looks like
some progress has been made. In a 2017 Los Angeles Times
article, writer Melissa Batchelor
Warnke noted white actor Ed Skrein, who backed out of a role in a “Hellboy” reboot that was
originally of mixed Asian heritage. The writer said, “Being a white advocate for racial justice
means putting people of color forward for economic opportunities, not droning on about how
important it is for them theoretically to have access to those opportunities” (Warnke, 2017, para.
3).
The common theme in many articles that highlighted whitewashing was that AMPAS
needs to stop apologizing for lack of diversity and take the initiative to curb it, which reinforces
the idea that diversity should be viewed through a proactive activist lens. When the Oscar
nominations were announced in 2016 with no people of color, each publication in my sample
42
criticized AMPAS and shortly after, the organization made efforts to diversify its membership
and revise its voting structure that helped perpetuate the lack of diversity in the first place.
But, these frames could potentially reinforce what DiAngelo (2016) says are popular
white narratives that work to deny racism. While the words “diversity” and “inclusion” are
widely employed to talk about reforming the industry, they often have the effect of rendering
issues of power, privilege, and discrimination. Gender historian Joan Wallach Scott said
ultimately, it’s not “diversity and inclusion” that will remedy these problems but programs [and
organizations] aimed at combating racism, sexism, and homophobia altogether (Drazenovich,
Rodriguez & Mercedes, 2017).
Hashtag activism: Pushing for an ‘inclusive’ environment. Many articles focused on
the idea of the film industry and AMPAS being more proactively “inclusive”— that is, having
objectives designed to increase the participation of all people and to leverage diversity effects
(Roberson, 2006). After the 2016 Oscar nominations when no people of color were announced,
#OscarsSoWhite got the conversation started about inclusiveness at the Academy Awards and
Hollywood.
At the beginning, #OscarsSoWhite was considered a “hashtag activism” movement, a
term originally coined by The New York Times
writer and columnist David Carr (2012).
#OscarsSoWhite took over Twitter in 2016 and gave activists a way to streamline their
messaging. While the skeptics of social media’s efficacy with protest movements call hashtag
activism “armchair activism” or “slacktivism,” (Kessler, 2012), #OscarsSoWhite was not
mentioned as such in any article I read. Instead, some writers transformed the hashtag into other
hashtags to reflect various ideas about the issue. For example, other hashtags were frequently
43
cited in the articles, such as #HollywoodSoWhite, #WritersRoomsSoWhite, #OscarsSoRight,
#OscarsSoDumb, #OscarsSoContrite, #OscarsSoBlack and #OscarsSoBlackandWhite.
Ultimately, social media, particularly Twitter, enabled individuals to see the importance of
addressing stigmatized issues such as diversity (Beigi et al., 2018).
The ability of Twitter hashtags to amplify information and ideas about the lack of
diversity at the Oscars across the platform helped activists and advocates of this movement with
outreach opportunities, which helped spur interest in the print media, particularly The New York
Times
and the Los Angeles Times
.
Reacting to #OscarsSoWhite. The #OscarsSoWhite movement pushed AMPAS to
implement new strategies in 2016 but many were not on board with the changes. In a Root
article, AMPAS President Isaacs acknowledged that a change in diversity wasn’t going to
happen overnight, but the Academy realized that it needs to work faster and do more (Callahan,
2016). Still, the new strategies to diversify in 2016 caused much tension within the Academy
because of the restrictions.
Writers noted that older members of AMPAS complained that they were being unfairly
blamed for a recent wave of white nominations even after they helped name the movie “12 Years
a Slave” with a Black director and actors the “Best Picture” of 2014 (Barnes & Cieply, 2016).
This was a common complaint in many of the articles—it’s not the Academy’s fault, but look to
the studios that run the film industry, which are responsible for creating these films that get voted
on in the first place.
Another viewpoint about the strategies was that it implied Black voters only vote for
other Black people, which isn’t exactly the case. “Part of the reason we have art is so we come
44
out of our comfort zones and get to know about different cultures and different realities” Pinkett
said (quotes in Eromosele, 2016, para. 6).
While racism and diversity is a slightly divisive topic, much of the research found on
representation and diversity in the media, including the USC annual diversity reports, concluded
that there has been a problem with inclusiveness onscreen and behind the camera, which is
difficult to dispute (Smith, Choueiti, & Pieper, 2016; Case, Choi, Choueiti, Pieper, & Smith,
2018). With the adoption of these strategies by AMPAS, it has helped diversify nominations,
evidenced by 2018 and 2019 Oscar ceremonies with the most diverse nominations in its history.
Diversity as a journey. Articles projected a dim outlook until the 2017 Oscars
ceremony when the tone shifted as more people of color were nominated in the major acting
categories and the Black drama “Moonlight” won the biggest category of the night, “Best
Picture.” Journalists for The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
embraced the
growing diversity at the Academy Awards.
The common salient issue highlighting overall representation at the Oscars gave a strong
indication that the publications were seeing progress through an activist approach to
representation. “Achieving true diversity involves more than just checking the boxes and an
attitude that says ‘OK, we’ve hired a woman, so now we’re done,’” said Audra Jenkins, Chief
Diversity and Inclusion Officer for Randstad (Binford, 2019, para. 8). As the years passed and
more people of color were included in the Oscars nominations and behind the camera from 2017
– 2019, coverage rewarded the move by calling initiatives “breakthrough” and a “step forward.”
In particular, Josh Rottenberg in the Los Angeles Times
focused on the records that were broken
in the 2017 Oscars ceremony by highlighting the high number of awards given to African
45
Americans, including the acting categories, which showed the progress can be made through
increasing diversity through on-screen representation (2017). This includes the 2019 Oscars
ceremony, which showed even more diversity than ever in its nominations. The New York Times
writer Brooks Barnes said:
The Hollywood establishment, excoriated for its longtime exclusion of women and
minorities, recognized African-American production design and costume virtuosos for
the first time. Asian-American filmmakers were honored. A movie about a gay rock star
collected four trophies. (2019, para. 1)
Diversity and the Bottom Line
Some articles focused on diversity in terms of #OscarsSoWhite affecting the “bottom
line” with ticket sales, as well as viewership of the annual Academy Awards ceremony.
Many articles in The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
pointed to the
power that these executives of major studios have over independent distributors: They offer
cultural producers advantages that smaller studios cannot afford. When it comes to screening
films in theaters, major studios have offices in regional markets, allowing it to maintain
continuous contact with theater chains across the country. Independent distributors are less
strategically networked with theaters, and have more difficulty marketing and gaining larger
theatrical releases for its films (Erigha, 2015). This presents a level of inequality for women and
racial minorities in the labor market.
Additionally, writers agreed that leadership and those hiring the artists and designers
seem to have a problem hiring more minorities for films. The questions remain: Are the
executives who decide what content to green light capable of working outside of their safe zones
46
and taking risks on new creators and new talent? Are audiences capable of demanding more
diversity from Hollywood by using their money to force change? The answer to these questions
is “yes,” but it will require both a top-down and bottom-up transformation of the value
proposition between Hollywood and its consumers. Today, the film industry is controlled by a
small number of profit-driven mega-corporations that appear to have created a culture that is
risk-averse, predictable, and ready to say “no” to new ways of thinking outside the box or
unknown talent (Miller, 2018).
Major distributors tend to play it safe, relying on franchise-heavy, blockbuster-dependent
films that ultimately are not working to “move the inclusion needle forward,” but has been ideal
for corporations (Miller, 2018, para. 9). Even after “Black Panther” shattered assumptions about
featuring minority characters in lead roles—it earned $1.29 billion at the box office (McClintock,
2018)—some in the industry are still having trouble recognizing it as a game changer. The 2018
movie shows that strong racial representation in a film can translate to better sales and higher
viewership. Cox’s (1994) Interactional Model of the Impact of Diversity on Individual Outcomes
and Organizational Effectiveness shows that when there is a diverse group in an industry or
organization— in this case, the film industry— it better represents society as a whole and has a
better chance of succeeding.
The rise and fall of TV ratings. Another issue that arose in some of the content in The
New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
was TV ratings for the annual Academy
Awards ceremony and how the lack of diversity might have an effect on overall viewership.
By the writers focusing on the TV ratings of the Academy Awards broadcast, it provided
a glimpse into how the diversity problem in Hollywood possibly affected viewership and
47
ultimately, the “bottom line” of the annual ceremony. But the ratings drop in recent years also
could be a result of movies losing their cultural relevancy in an era of peak TV (Rottenberg,
2017).
In today’s media-saturated market, there is much competition for a viewer’s attention
and that’s why it is important to have diversified casts and stories on the big screen—they often
have higher viewership and earn more revenue than those that are homogenous (Deggans, 2014).
By highlighting this facet of the diversity problem, it might give an incentive for studios to “do
better,” as some writers noted in their articles.
To effect change, studio executives must receive support from the top to seek out and
build relationships with content creators, artists, producers and aspiring young professionals who
reflect their increasingly diverse audiences (Miller, 2018). And a driving factor to this progress is
the fact that hashtag activism worked. It took an issue that started online (Twitter) and brought
tangible change to policies in the Academy.
48
Hashtag activism and agenda building. In answering RQ2b, which asked how AMPAS
framed their issues in response to #OscarsSoWhite in its media releases, the findings showed that
when the #OscarsSoWhite movement went viral, it caused the Academy to reflect on the racial
diversity of its membership and voting body. While agenda setting examines the transfer of issue
salience from media to the public, agenda building in public relations explores the reciprocal
relations among the stakeholder groups in the process of salience formation, transfer, and
exchange (Hughes & Dan, 2009). Information subsidies come into play in agenda building where
if practitioners can obtain strong media placement of their subsidies, then they can influence the
media agenda, “which in turn can influence public opinion and the public agenda” (Curtin, 1999,
p. 54).
AMPAS pushed the new strategies to enhance diversity through its media releases in an
attempt to influence the news media to cover them. As the coverage grew, particularly from
large media outlets such as The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
,
#OscarsSoWhite made its way back to social media, which then produced a justification to
continue advocating for the issue (Corbett & Mori, 1999). This cycle allowed issue salience to
be formed, applied, and transferred across various channels, which creates influence (Kiousis,
Park, Kim, & Go, 2013). This issue salience of the new strategies support first-level agenda
building.
In this case, while The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
, and The Root
featured the
new strategies prominently when they were introduced in January shortly after the 2016 Oscars
nominations, writers framed the lack of diversity in the nomination pool of the Oscars as
damage to the brand and something that would negatively impact the 2016 ceremony.
49
By making this a prominent issue in response to the social media movement, it indicated
that the Academy has had a systemic problem with inclusiveness in its organization and after
being “called out” by celebrities and other prominent film industry professionals and threats of
boycotts, it needed to take steps to diversify. Its first media release about new strategies to
bolster its membership was published online on January 22, 2016, just eight days after the
all-white Oscar nominations were announced. AMPAS’ media releases indicated a low position
of power and showed that they needed to change their system, as seen by its language in the
opening paragraph, “The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences approved a sweeping series of substantive changes designed to make the Academy’s
membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse”
(AMPAS, 2016, para. 1).
By strategically using the language “sweeping,” “substantive” and “significantly,” the
AMPAS worked to overcompensate in its content for its current lack of diversity with its
membership and voting body. AMPAS highlighted its new diversity efforts for membership but
failed to mention its current racial makeup, which doesn’t allow the reader to have context about
how much the Academy is working to diversify its membership and make improvements. This
also includes a follow-up media release about changes to the Board of Governors, which the
AMPAS said would increase diversity. They said:
The Academy will also take immediate action to increase diversity by adding new
members who are not Governors to its executive and board committees where key
decisions about membership and governance are made. This will allow new members an
50
opportunity to become more active in Academy decision-making and help the
organization identify and nurture future leaders. (AMPAS, 2016, para. 6)
Again, by using language such as “immediate action,” “key decisions,”
“decision-making,” “identify,” and “nurture,” AMPAS framed their response to increase
diversity across the board as reactionary, which overcompensated for a current lack of diversity
at the core of the organization—an issue for decades. The #OscarsSoWhite movement made the
issue realized on a grander scale, because, as the author Ronda Racha Penrice of The Root
said
this lack of diversity “is no anomaly” (Penrice, 2017, para. 1). As of February 2019, AMPAS has
more than 8,000 voting members, made up of 31% women— up from 25% in 2015— and 16%
people of color— up from just 8% in 2015 (Brooksbank, 2019). However, “while these stats
represent a sizable change in the makeup of the Academy in a short amount of time, it still falls
short of reflecting the demographic makeup of the United States,” broadcaster Tommy
Brooksbank said (2019, para. 5). It will take the Academy much more time to reflect the
country’s population due to the organization’s structure and rules, but the strategies seem to be
changing the culture of the award show for the better, which signals that the film industry is
changing, too.
Future Research and Limitations
As a qualitative study examining how prominent publications have covered the
#OscarsSoMovement, there has been limited research on social media movements and how they
have been discussed in publications. Future researchers may want to broaden the scope of social
media movements as a whole and how publications’ frames of these movements possibly play a
role in affecting change in society.
51
In addition, future research might explore other entertainment publications that are geared
toward races other than white and African American. While The New York Times
, Los Angeles
Times
, and The Root
were chosen as illustrative entertainment publications, their viewpoints may
not be indicative of all entertainment publications in the United States, thus potentially limiting
the study’s findings. As seen, the issue of diversity is complex and no publication is truly
representative of #OscarsSoWhite or diversity as a whole. And although I took extensive steps to
develop a comprehensive search strategy for the articles, I may have missed some articles in
these publications about #OscarsSoWhite as it relates to diversity. Also, my data does not
examine factors that influence fluctuations in the coverage and framing of the #OscarsSoWhite
movement and lack of diversity in the film industry. The focus of this paper was to provide a
broad overview of the coverage of the movement, including what issues were made salient and
how the media framed these issues for readers. Finally, the basis of the study was a social media
movement, but the conversation about #OscarsSoWhite was not observed online to see which
issues were made salient by Twitter accounts using the hashtag, which could potentially be
different than my findings.
Conclusion
The primary goal of this study was to examine the coverage of diversity in the film
industry, particularly in the Academy Award nominations, with a focus on what issues the news
media has made salient and how they have framed these issues. This study makes a contribution
to practical and scholarly literature in the field of media and diversity through examining news
media and a prominent organization in the film industry that has much influence in society and
the arts. When its lack of diversity became a wide topic of conversation on social media and the
52
news media used its influence to make this issue salient across the country and possibly the
world, AMPAS took immediate action to ensure a more inclusive environment for voting, which
has had a ripple effect in Hollywood and major studios responsible for a majority of the films in
wide release. Because film is a prominent medium where people share their stories and its reach
extends across the world, the Academy Awards have remained an important fixture in the media
and diversity. There has been a slow change in overall diversity across the board and the public
has noticed. But, in trying to change the system and culture of the film industry, the Academy
Awards organization is seeking to make film a more inclusive and accepting society and
changing any culture takes time.
Additionally, it adds to the literature of the importance of representation and inclusiveness
by looking at comprehensive reports on diversity in the media and how the news media has made
issues about diversity and inclusion salient through its vast coverage about the movement as it
relates to the Academy Awards. Plus, it shows how journalists and other communicators present
information in a particular way that most resonates with existing underlying schemas among
readers (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). These frames of the movement ultimately influence readers
about how to think about diversity at the award show and film industry as a whole, thus
potentially producing more inclusive strategies at a high level and offering more opportunities
for minorities.
Finally, this study has implications for other arts organizations that have a lack of diversity
in their workforce and are looking to enhance opportunities to all minorities. The Academy
Awards were studied as an example because their annual ceremony is the pinnacle for the craft
of filmmaking. Knowledge of diversity strategies adopted by the award show and major studios
53
in Hollywood can help other organizations, professionals, and publics adapt to change and be
more open to new ideas.
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