Minority groups in Spanish television fiction: Content analysis and citizen perceptions for the creation of a diversity index

Abstract

This paper analyzes gender, sexual orientation, nationality and age diversity in the Spanish television series broadcasted in prime time during 2016 and the first semester of 2017. We used content analysis on a sample of more than 700 characters to create a diversity index and conducted a survey to analyse the perception of the population. Thus, two studies were carried out in this analysis, in addition to the creation of an ad-hoc index. After analyzing the data, it is concluded that, in general, the diversity shown in Spanish audiovisual fiction is low (0.76 on a scale of 0-4), with significant differences among the series; however, Spanish citizens expressed a slight agreement (2.16 on a scale of 0-4) that women, people over 65 or the LGBT+ population were accurately represented in TV series, while they neither agreed nor disagreed that the percentage of foreign characters corresponded to reality.