Part of the Pass the Mic funded project
Pass the mic: Researching women of colour in Scottish news
Pass the Mic is a project focusing on women of colour in Scottish news media. Initially an online database of women of colour experts, thanks to funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, from 2020-21 the project has expanded to undertake direct work with women of colour experts and media partners STV, The Herald, Sunday National, Daily Record, Scotsman, Courier and Holyrood magazine to challenge exclusionary cultures within news media and create a platform for the expertise of women of colour. This funding has also enabled us to undertake research to establish baseline information about where women of colour currently appear in Scottish news media.
This blog series will reflect on this research, conducted by Karen Boyle and Melody House at the University of Strathclyde. The research is in partnership with Gender Equal Media Scotland, a coalition of academics, equality organisations, and journalists. Who work to transform Scotland’s media and creative industries, into a place where women have equality as employees and subjects.
To make sense of what we found, it is important to know how we went about this study, what we included (and excluded) and what the big stories were. The research is in two stages. Part one establishes baseline information about where women of colour appear in Scottish news media. The first findings blog provides an overview and in later blogs we will drill down to investigate particular issues in more detail, including the position of women of colour in news about Scotland and the construction of national identity around religious festivals and football.
Part two will focus specifically on the election period, with new blogs to be added to the series as more findings become available.
Pass the Mic: What we studied and why
Our study focused on Scottish news media over seven days from Monday 9th November 2020 and included television, newspapers, web news and twitter. Read in full.
A week in Scotland’s news
As in any news monitoring study, it’s useful to preface our findings by reflecting on the biggest stories of the week in question (9 – 15 November 2020) as they may produce distinctive patterns in findings. Read in full.
Where are the women of colour in Scottish news?
This blog presents some initial findings from our Pass the Mic research focusing on women of colour in the Scottish news media. As detailed in our previous blog… Read in full.
Where is Diwali in the Scottish news?
This weekend, many people will be celebrating Easter, along with some much-needed time off after passing the grim milestone of one-year in lockdown in the UK. We have become accustomed to pared-back holidays and, with that, the near constant stream of news about how restrictions might impact our celebrations. Read in full
Women of colour in news in and about Scotland – where are they?
In our first period of media monitoring for Pass the Mic – from 9-15 November 2020 – we focused on where women of colour appeared across all categories of news in Scotland. In our initial report, we noted that the majority of women of colour who appeared in our news media appeared in stories which were not about Scotland. Read in full.
Women of Colour – 2021 election coverage background
In this blog we outline the second stage of our media monitoring work. We analysed stories online, on TV and in newspapers during the week of the Scottish Parliment to investigate how many women of colour were making and participating in the news. This blog outlines how we did it and the overall influencing stories of the week. Read in full.
Women of Colour – still missing in election coverage
This blog presents some initial findings based on an analysis of 3843 stories across seven Scottish papers, twitter accounts and websites, and three television shows, during a nine-day period spanning the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary elections (1st-9th May). From it we see, women of colour remain under-represented and their expertise remain missing for critical election coverage. Read in full.
Symbols or agents? Women of colour in Scottish election coverage
The Scottish Parliamentary election in May 2021 saw more people of colour candidates than any previous Scottish election. It led tothe election of the highest proportion of people of colour in the Parliament’s 22-year history – but where were the women of colour candidates and elected MSPs in coverage and where was their agency to voice their own views? Read blog in full.
Refocusing the picture, and passing the mic: Analysing stories about the Delta Variant
ln this blog we analyse how the Delta variant has been covered across Scotland’s media; who was asked for their input, the prejudiced language often used and the images used to enage an audience. Dr Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra tell us about her experiences with media and why COVID19 coverage illustrates the importance of Pass the Mic. Read in full.