Hollywood Underrepresentation Simulated Causes (1.0.0)

Presented here is a socioeconomic agent-based model (ABM) to examine the Hollywood labor system as a network within a simulated movie labor market based on preferential attachment and compare the findings with 50 co-production ego networks during the 2015 movie year. Using the ABM, I test the role slight individual preference for racial and ethnic similarity within one’s own network at the microlevel and find that it is insufficient to explain the phenomena of racial and ethnic underrepresentation at the macrolevel. The ABM also includes the ability to test alternative explanations, such as overt opportunity loss as a possible explanation.

Release Notes

I developed the original version of this ABM in 2016 and it was updated for efficiency in 2019.

Associated Publications

Iasiello, C. (2020). Using agent based modeling to interpret underlying factors of underrepresentation of minorities in Hollywood films. In Proceedings of the 2020 Spring Simulation Conference (SpringSim ‘20). Society for Computer Simulation International, San Diego, CA, USA, Article 43, 1–12.

Iasiello, C. (2017) “Underrepresentation of minorities in Hollywood films: An agent-based modeling approach to explanations” Poster session presented at the Winter Simulation Conference 2017, Las Vegas, NV, Dec 3, 2017

Iasiello, C. (2017) “Using Agent-Based Modeling to Interpret Underlying Factors of Underrepresentation of Minorities in Hollywood Films” Presentation at the International Conference on Computational Social Science, Cologne, Germany, Jul 13, 2017