UCLA

This dissertation is a production study of disability representation in televisual entertainment from 2015-2024 at Netflix. The current digital ecosystem provides a forum for niche topics due to enhanced competition between platforms, more sophisticated utilization of algorithms to precisely target selected audiences, and increased opportunities for creators that are given more authorial control over previously underrepresented storylines. While there is much at stake for those who consume these representations, this project focuses on the characters. This seemingly disparate group of collaborators – including “entities” like the disability advocacy groups, university research organizations, casting agents, disabled creatives, as well as corporate “institutions” like Netflix, Nielsen, and IMDB– play off each other in complex, consequential ways that can only be understood by acknowledging and delineating their mutually constitutive roles in producing the characters that make it to the screen. This project combines production studies and disability media studies frameworks to delineate how these entities and institutions understand themselves and their industrial and social functions. This project tracks emerging practices in disability representation in entertainment media including diversity pipeline programs, cultures of disclosure, authentic casting practices, and utilizing diversity as a branding strategy, while also tracing the axiomatic notions of normality, neutrality, and naturalness.