International Congress on Media, Gender and Sexualities: Representations, Literacies and Audiences

The Spanish DIGISCREENS team delivered a paper at the International Congress on Media, Gender and Sexualities: Representations, Literatures and Audiences, held in Benasque, Spain, 6-10 June 2023.

The aim of the contribution was to present the project, discuss the Spanish case and comment on some preliminary results. At that time, the platforms under analysis were the most popular SVOD worldwide (Netflix), a national SVOD (Filmin) and a national VOD platform belonging to a public broadcaster (RTVE Play). Interviews with key actors (mostly editors or content directors) from the platforms were recounted. Attention was drawn to how the platforms interact with laws, regulations and public policies at national and European level, aimed at ensuring an equal image of women and men on screen, and at promoting the representation of diversity in terms of gender and sexuality, avoiding scenarios that favour discrimination or incite sexual or gender-based violence towards women and all genders. Also discussed were the Spanish team's exchanges with the CIMA IMPULSA programme to promote women's access to the audiovisual industry, the Observatorio de Igualdad de RTVE and the Observatorio de la Diversidad de los Medios Audiovisuales (ODA), the latter being fundamental to the project's interest in analysing the representations of LGTBIQ+, racialised and disabled people in Spanish audiovisual fiction. Interactions with these collaborators were described and the methodological approach to the close reading of potential material for analysis was outlined, with a specific focus on representations of sexual and gender dissidence on screen.