Stories help us learn, dream and build common understanding within and across cultures. Media and entertainment companies are our modern storytellers, creating and distributing shared experiences that can bring us together. We, the audience, judge progress – whether we see ourselves portrayed and how, and whether companies are creating communities and leading conversations. To help media and entertainment leaders to understand where the gaps in representation exist today and what the stakes are, the World Economic Forum is proud to share a firstofits-kind cross-media sector index that measures audience perceptions of representation.

The Audience Representation Index provides a benchmark of how well consumers of media and entertainment content see themselves represented in film and TV, gaming, news and magazines, and sport, and whether companies within these sectors are contributing to communities and society.

Data from this research, fielded by Ipsos, shows that diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is good for business; for brands with a 10-point higher Audience Representation Index score, there was a 30% higher likelihood that consumers would trust the brand. While representation is important to everyone, it means even more to those who have historically been under-represented and this affects consumer habits. For example, 51% of women are more likely to trust brands that represent a diverse range of people, while 64% of Black respondents in the UK and 67% of Black respondents in the US tend to engage with brands more frequently if they are inclusive of diverse perspectives.