Transgender Visibility : Examining the Influence of Media Representation on Attitudes toward Transgender and Gender-Diverse Individuals

Abstract: Over the last few years media representation of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people has increased. Despite this, there is a lack of studies looking at the influence of media representation of TGD on attitudes. This study aimed to look at whether the valence of media representation has an influence on cisgender people’s attitudes, and potential moderators of this relationship. Seven-hundred and forty-four participants were divided into three groups, where they were exposed to an article with neutral, positive or negative media representation of TGD people before answering questions on their attitudes, beliefs and experiences with TGD people. The results showed that this study did not find that the valence of media representation influenced attitudes toward TGD people, which contradicts the hypothesis. However, exposure to TGD representations in media, gender binary beliefs, and positive emotions were found to moderate this, which was in line with the hypotheses. Specifically, more exposure to TGD representations in media and stronger gender binary beliefs was associated with more negative attitudes after reading a positive representation article, compared to the control article. More positive emotions led to more positive attitudes after reading a positive representation article, compared to a control article. Therefore, valence of media representation did not influence attitudes in this study, but exposure, beliefs and emotions seemed to play a role in this relationship. Future studies should investigate whether accumulation of media representation influence attitudes as this might explain the lack of a significant relationship in this study.