Prominence Of Characters Research Articles

Ethnic Diversity in Children\u2019s Books in the Netherlands

The present study examined the representation of authors, illustrators, and characters of color in books for young children (6 years old and under) that (1) have won awards, (2) were purchased most often, and (3) were borrowed most often from libraries in the Netherlands from 2009 to 2018. Factors influencing the prominence of characters were explored. In total, 64 books and 2053 characters were coded, and representation statistics were compared to statistics of the national population. Results suggest a slight underrepresentation of authors of color as compared to population statistics, and an underrepresentation of characters of color as compared to the target audience. Results on some factors influencing prominence suggest that White characters and characters of color play an equally prominent role in the books. Results on other factors, however, suggest that characters of color, especially females, are less prominent in terms of their role in the story, whether they have a name, and in relation to the number of other characters in the book. The results provide an insight in to ethnic diversity in popular books for young children in the Netherlands, and show some room for improvement in terms of representation and prominence of characters of color, so that children of color might have more opportunities to identify with characters and that readers could be exposed to ethnic diversity as represented in society.

Exploring the prominence ofRomeo and Juliet’s characters using weighted centrality measures

Why are Romeo and Juliet prominent characters in Shakespeare’s play of the same name? Contrary to what common sense might suggest, the academic literature does not provide a unique answer to this question. Indeed, there is little agreement on who the main character is and which elements of a script contribute to establishing a character’s leading role. The objective of this article is to explore and compare the prominence of characters in Romeo and Juliet by using social network analysis. To this end, we calculate the centralities of several characters in Romeo and Juliet using a method based on Social Network Analysis. Comparing the scores generated by this analysis, we found that Romeo’s centrality is more stable than Juliet’s while hers is lower and supported by the ‘strength of the bonds’ she develops with other characters. Thus, the comparison of different centrality rankings and clusters provides new knowledge about the plays of Shakespeare. We show that the ‘strength’ of the relationships affects the prominence of the characters. This finding opens new directions for analyzing Shakespeare’s scripts and determining who the main character is using weighted centrality measures. Finally, we discuss some theoretical and practical implications of the method used in this study.

Prominence of Characters on Television Program Websites

This study investigated the general distribution of gender, ethnicity, and age on broadcast TV networks' web pages and compared the distribution with on-air promotion of programs, and where possible, to U.S. Census. It also modified and tested a salience index, up to now used mainly for measuring the effectiveness of over-the-air television promotion, as a measure of character prominence on the web. As expected, images of prime-time characters on websites were predominantly male and White but somewhat less male and White than in on-air television overall. Frequency counts of images showed that websites foregrounded settled-adult characters more than younger characters, but applying an index of promotional salience revealed that extra visual attention was given to teens. In other words, determining which characters are featured depends on which image attributes are evaluated. These findings suggest that the salience index measures subtle attributes of prominence useful for assessing differential promotion.