LGBTQ+ Representation in Teenage Dramas

⚖️ Between Commerce and Authenticity

LGBTQ+ representation in teenage dramas plays a crucial role in shaping social attitudes, especially among young audiences. These portrayals don’t just entertain — they influence how queerness is understood, accepted, or stereotyped in wider culture.

This type of representation is often pulled between two forces:

On one side, portrayals are shaped by commercial goals, focusing on market appeal and safe diversity.

On the other, they reflect a push for authentic storytelling, driven by social impact and representation from within the LGBTQ+ community.

To explore these dynamics, our project builds an ontology designed to describe and analyze how LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed in teen dramas — looking at narrative roles, common tropes, stereotypes, and character depth.

At the core of this work is the Perspectivisation Ontology (Gangemi & Presutti), which we adapted to include two main lenses:

• The Profit-Driven Lens — highlights portrayals shaped by commercial logic

• The Social Impact Lens — values empowering and realistic representation

Our model allows us to connect these perspectives with audience reactions, cultural impact, and the intentions behind the storytelling. By combining structured theory with real-world data, we aim to better understand what makes representation fair, meaningful, or misleading — and why that matters.

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📍 This project is part of the final coursework for Knowledge Representation and Knowledge Extraction, University of Bologna a.y. 2023/2024

🔗 Digital assets and resources: GitHub Repository

💌 Team Members

• Virginia D'Antonio — [e-mail]

• Elena Binotti — [e-mail]

• Elvira Kushlak — [e-mail]

• Anna Pak — [e-mail]