The aim of this strategy is to reduce prejudice through the viewer and character sharing an ingroup identity. This creates a sense of inclusion that reduces social distance and mitigates outgroup stigma.

For example, an urban ingroup viewer who watches The Eagle Huntress perceives the main character Aisholpan as a nomad, and thus as an outgroup. This may activate stereotypes of nomads being primitive and uneducated.

However, the film’s beginning also represents Aisholpan as a student. This strategy adds an additional identity category to Aisholpan: one that the urban viewer can likely identify with. Apart from this being a surprising combination for the viewer, it adds a shared ingroup category that mitigates the prejudice towards the nomad outgroup.

Indirectly Shared Identity

The shared identity model also works with presenter-led documentaries, where the ingroup viewer has only an indirect parasocial contact with outgroup characters. For example, in the BBC travel series Africa with Ade Adepitan British celebrity Ade Adepitan explores African countries, communities and issues. We can assume that one of the aims is to reduce prejudice towards African cultures in an average white British viewer.

Adepitan’s visible screen identities include presenter, disabled, Black and British. Correspondingly, the viewer identifies as non-presenter, non-disabled, non-Black and British. The characters Adepitan interacts with are mostly non-presenters, non-disabled, Black and African. The image below shows the identity configurations.

The series tries hard to reduce the social distance between the viewer and Adepitan, as well as between Adepitan and the characters. To do this, Adepitan’s shared identity of Britishness is repeatedly reinforced through his comments, his humour, his reflections, his English accent and his general demeanour.

At the same time, his outgroup identities are de-emphasised. His disability is mostly incidental, without a major narrative function and only occasionally mentioned. His presenter outgroup is mitigated by him acting more like a British tourist rather than an authoritative presenter. He asks questions, chats with people, marvels at new discoveries, reflects on his personal journey and is spontaneous and non-prescriptive.

The viewer is prompted to feel close to Adepitan, not only through the shared identity but also through perspective-taking techniques. He repeatedly interacts with materialities in everyday life situations, as seen in the below images.

Adepitan shares the identity of being Black with the local characters, and there are occasional references to his own Nigerian roots. He also interacts with them in ways that allow him to understand their physical and psychological perspectives. For instance, in Kinshasa he is chatting to a female taxi driver in her car surrounded by heavy traffic. She tells him about her resilience in working in a busy city and a male-dominated profession.

The result is that stereotype activation towards the African characters is mitigated in the viewer through Adepitan as an intermediary. The viewer is likely to feel socially closer to the characters and thus adopt a more inclusive and less prejudiced attitude. It is a more indirect form of parasocial contact between ingroup viewer and outgroup character, using a mediating character who shares identities with viewers and local characters.

There even is a moderate prejudice reduction towards the identity of disability, since the combination of ‘wheelchair user’ and ‘travel presenter’ is definitely a surprising combination.

For more information about shared identity configurations see Chapter 9.

The next section discusses shared intimacy, an extension of the indirectly shared identity concept.