Hollywood Has A Major Diversity Problem, USC Study Finds

A newly released study suggests diversity in TV and film is so bad, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite should probably be changed to #HollywoodSoWhite.

That's because of an "epidemic of invisibility" cited by researchers at the University of Southern California,

who analyzed more than 21,000 characters and behind-the-scenes workers on more than 400 films and TV shows released from September 2014 through August 2015. They tabulated representations of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual status.

"We're seeing that there's not just a diversity problem in Hollywood; there's actually an inclusion crisis," Stacy L. Smith, one of the study's authors and founding director of the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said in an interview.

The study, titled "Inclusion or Invisibility? Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment," found just one-third of speaking characters were female (33.5 percent), despite the fact that women represent just over half the population in America. Just 28.3 percent of characters with dialogue were from non-white racial/ethnic groups, though such groups are nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population.

A newly released study suggests diversity in TV and film is so bad, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite should probably be changed to #HollywoodSoWhite.

That's because of an "epidemic of invisibility" cited by researchers at the University of Southern California, who analyzed more than 21,000 characters and behind-the-scenes workers on more than 400 films and TV shows released from September 2014 through August 2015. They tabulated representations of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual status.

"We're seeing that there's not just a diversity problem in Hollywood; there's actually an inclusion crisis," Stacy L. Smith, one of the study's authors and founding director of the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said in an interview.

The study, titled "Inclusion or Invisibility? Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment," found just one-third of speaking characters were female (33.5 percent), despite the fact that women represent just over half the population in America. Just 28.3 percent of characters with dialogue were from non-white racial/ethnic groups, though such groups are nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population.