Study of Racial Representation in Classic Media

For my final project, I plan to make an infographic representing the changes in diversity over various seasons of Saturday Night Live. I chose this because I want to study if popular classic television shows are getting more or less diverse, this is important, because popular television has a strong influence on culture as a whole.

This idea is in it’s beginning stages. I have also been considering studying another long-running show like Friends instead, or doing some sort of a racial timer for speaking characters on a classic movie like Star Wars.

Research Question:

Topic: Diversity in popular tv show (SNL)

Question: How has the cast of SNL changed culturally over the years?

Significance: representation and diversity is important, especially in popular classics like SNL.

Plan: Survey the cast of SNL from the time that it began to today and study trends in percentage of multicultural cast, to white cast.

Kind of Artifact: Infographic

Written on October 17, 2016 by Rachael Brooks