This dissertation examines the queer visibility and discourses surrounding that
visibility as they have unfolded on Irish television, film and alternative activist media
between 1974 and 2008. The thesis argues that LGBT activists originally deployed
media visibility for the liberatory potential of advancing LGBT rights. However,
mainstream media institutions exploited queer identities for economic purposes; that,
coupled with the eruption of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, disrupted the
mainstreaming goals of queer visibility. This resulted in queer visibility becoming
caught up in a shifting power dynamic, or as this thesis terms it, a tug-of-war, between
Ireland’s LGBT community and media institutions.
As this thesis will argue, the development of queer Irish media visibility was informed
by local activism, legal changes, viral epidemics, international media influences along
with the development of Ireland’s media landscape. The thesis traverses time periods,
media forms and Queer and Media Studies theoretical frameworks to provide an
overview of the dynamic of queer Irish visibility, pursuing connections across current
affairs programming, documentary, chat shows, soap opera, television drama, film,
magazines and broader print media. The methodology of this thesis is predominantly
archival research, textual analysis and semi-structured interviews, a mixed-methods
approach that uncovers the relationship between the proliferation of queer visibility
and alternative queer media and the processes by which such media are produced.
Using these forms and practices, the thesis will explore how varying Irish gay civil
rights groups influenced the types of queer media images that manifested on screen
and within their alternative media economies; how the changing social, cultural,
economic and legal context of the historical period saw the transition of queer
visibility from current affairs to narrativised, fictionalised representations and
illuminate how queer Irish visibility transformed from localised activism to
aspirational attempts of participating in a global media economy.