Time to Pass the Mic: Gender and race in Scotland’s news

Abstract

Pass the Mic is a project focusing on women of colour in Scottish news, established by Talat Yaqoob. In 2020, funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust enabled us to undertake original research to investigate the representation of women of colour in Scottish news, providing baseline evidence for Pass the Mic’s ongoing work with media partners and women-of-colour writers. Focusing on media produced in Scotland with a national audience, we conducted two periods of media monitoring (November 2020, May 2021) to investigate where and how women of colour are represented in Scottish news. Situating this study relative to existing media monitoring projects, we discuss the methodological challenges of codifying gender and race in news. Whilst our finding that women of colour are under-represented in Scottish news is not surprising, in considering how women of colour are represented we point to the tensions of visibility for women of colour, the limited construction of their expertise, and the marginalisation of women of colour’s opinions within stories about Scotland, including when these stories explicitly address racial in/equality.