The aim of this strategy is to inhibit social categorisation and the activation of disability stereotypes by depicting the disabled outgroup character as an individual human being. This blurs category boundaries of disability and non-disability, thus reducing the parasocial distance between viewer and character. It prevents the disability outgroup from being seen as a homogenous and generalised group, which reduces stigma.

There are two conditions for making the viewer perceive the character through an individual identity: differentiation and personalisation.

Differentiation renders the character unique by combining at least five social categories that intersect but are conceptually unrelated to each other. This means the categories should not be associated with each other and not share similar stereotypes.

For instance, a disabled, old, obese, homeless female combines five categories that (at least in a Western society) share the stereotypes of physical and social incapability. This additive combination could maintain the stigma of each category. In contrast, a deaf, transgender, boyfriend, Asian-American, Jewish artist, as seen on Chella Man’s Youtube channel, emphasises at least five unrelated identities. This makes it very hard for any viewer to categorise Man into just the disability group, thus mitigating the activation of stigmatising disability stereotypes.

Personalisation evokes a personal connection between viewer and character through relatability and the disclosure of intimate information about themselves. Relatability is usually evoked through perspective-taking techniques.

Chella Man’s videos use a lot of perspective-taking techniques, such as emphasising particular situations, everyday life routines and material interactions. These help the viewer understand his physical and psychological perspective. Man also shares highly intimate information with the viewer, such as his struggle to juggle so many identities or his relationship with his girlfriend.

Another example is my documentary The Therry Fragments (2016). It represents Terry Hopwood-Jackson as a blind painter, husband, poet, musician, smoker and misanthrope.

The film also uses a lot of perspective-taking techniques to make him more relatable, such as having regular cigarette breaks after his painting sessions, solving crosswords with his partner, and pouring whiskey in the evenings. Terry also reveals a lot of very personal information to the viewer, like his depression of not being able to draw because of his blindness and his desire of living in a bigger home to have more space for his artwork.

Differentiation by Contrast

When a media narrative represents multiple disabled characters, it can achieve differentiation by contrast. Each character has the disability outgroup identity, but they also have additional, conceptually different identities. This makes them appear unique within the disability group, as the image below shows. The result is that the disability community appears less homogenous and more diverse. This mitigates the activation of disability stereotypes and reduces parasocial distance.

For example, in the below YouTube video by blind filmmaker Juan Alcazar, he interviews 12 blind YouTube vloggers talking about their individual experiences. Although the emphasis is on visual impairment, which evokes the stereotypes of physical and social incapability, their lived experiences are very different to each other. So, the stereotypes are mitigated by diversifying the blindness outgroup.

The representation of individual identities is the most potent strategy in reducing disability prejudice and stigma. At the same time, it is the hardest to achieve because both above conditions should be fulfilled.

Unfortunately, it is also the riskiest strategy because the individualised outgroup character may be perceived as an exception who proves the stereotypical rule of being disabled. So, like all other stigma reduction strategies, one media narrative is not enough to reduce stigma. This requires a multitude of media narratives with different characters, themes and types of stigma reduction techniques. Also, stigma reduction through on-screen representations needs to sustainably reach a wide range of non-disabled ingroup viewers.

Read more about the intricacies, potentials and risks of individual identities in Chapter 11.