A new month, a new discussion question! This month, we are here with an important topic regarding diversity in Wattpad. Let's hear what some of our members think!
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Question posted on May 13, 2023:
Do you think Wattpad and social media allow for the equal promotion of all stories and voices in order to encourage diversity? Has Wattpad been successful in encouraging genuine diversity or is there something more needed to be done?
*note, all answers are slightly modified for grammar and structure*
Winning answer by sandydragon1:
Wattpad definitely does a much better job of promoting diverse voices than it used to. Over the past few years, I've seen it put a lot more effort into promoting stories that contain characters with a wide variety of identities. In addition to creating curated lists focusing on certain aspects of diversity (such as the API list they're promoting right now), they do a good job of promoting diverse stories in more mixed lists as well. It's lovely to see both kinds of promotion happening because it helps avoid the feeling of certain identities being othered (for example, Wattpad only promoting LGBT+ stories in Pride themed lists would feel like lip service, while promoting them year round in a variety of themed lists feels genuine).
That being said, while Wattpad has taken great steps in the right direction, there's still more they can do. A little disclaimer here: due to intersecting identities and how complicated sublabels in different communities can get, it's literally impossible to represent all groups equally. However, I do feel like certain groups tend to be left out of conversations about diversity more often than others.
The biggest example of this in my personal experience is the disabled community. I keep a close eye on Wattpad's curated lists, and it's unfortunately pretty uncommon for stories with disabled leads to get promoted. I've also seen an upsetting number of stories where disabled characters aren't treated like actual people. Their portrayal often revolved around able-bodied characters and making them look good rather than their own journeys. There are legitimately great stories about disabled characters out there and Wattpad has promoted at least a few of them (such as in one of the community curator's lists back in 2020), but it still feels like the disabled community tends to get sidelined, both in terms of story promotion and some of Wattpad's decisions in general (I'm looking at you, sunsetting of text to speech...).
1st Runner-up answer by AziaElga:
Before Wattpad and social media, getting books to be promoted to the public is much more selective (probably requires a publisher's backing or for the author to be famous/rich to do so). The sheer amount of ceilings you need to break through to encourage diversity is bigger in the past. With Wattpad blowing up stories or with social media helping self-published authors get big, I think they definitely help with promoting a bigger variety of stories that would otherwise never see the light of a traditional publisher. While the platforms themselves are limited with their promotion efforts (and botched algorithms sometimes, looking at you, Wattpad), I like that they exist to rival the traditional publishers who used to rule publishing.
Nothing is ever perfect so in general my answer to the second part for every single platform out there is: there is always something more to be done! The unfortunate truth is that Wattpad is a company who wants to earn money so that in itself hinders their ability to truly promote all books across the board. They're always going to focus on what they think is going to earn them money. I hope they realize that representation matters and to try to shift their focus more more towards encouraging diversity in the future.
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And that's all! Thank you to everyone who participated in this round's discussion questions, and congratulations to the winners! Feel free to leave any additional thoughts in the comments.
See you next round, debaters!
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