Who Does MTV Hate The Most?

In light of last night's Nicki Minaj/Taylor Swift shitstorm I had nothing better to do that try to work out whether there was anything in it. Minaj hypothesises that the MTV Video Music Awards are prejudiced against black women. If this is correct we could expect to see them under-represented in nominations. To put my cards on the table, I don't know much about Nicki Minaj. I like Taylor Swift, but Bad Blood is rubbish and Blank Space should have been nominated instead.

Notes -

• All data from wikipedia.
• There was a point for every nomination from 2009 to the present, 2009 was chosen since it was the start of the Taylor Swift/Kanye thing that this is basically a continuation of.
• All collaborations were listed as half a point each, with no distinction made as to who was the featured artist. If there were multiple collaborators, or members of a band, any demographic represented got half a point, regardless of proportions (E.g. Bad Blood got 0.5 for white woman, 0.5 for black man. The Pussycat Dolls got 0.5 for black woman, 0.5 for white woman).
• I didn't make any effort to include other racial groups. There were almost no asians represented at all, but when there were I did not include them.
• Hispanics (e.g. Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez) were listed as white, since this was already far too much effort anyway. Some years had a specific latino category, I ignored this, as well as the special categories in 2009 I didn't really understand.
• There are specific male and female categories. I included these, since they balance out, and often had featured artists anyway. Likewise, hip hop, which was mostly black, and rock, which was mostly white, were included.
• The Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, whatever that is, was included, despite not having nominations, only a winner.
• There was one nominee who identifies as agender. I did not include her in the obvious category.
• I imagine I counted slightly wrong, but not very wrong, and not wrong in any particlar direction.
• Charli XCX was classed as white. 
• Michael Jackson was classed as black. Ha.

Total Nominations

	Black	White
Male	134	189.5	323.5
Female	73.5	146.5	220
	207.5	336	543.5

Percentage Nominations (rounded)

	Black	White	Total
Male	24.7	34.9	59.6
Female	13.5	27.0	40.5
Total	38.2	61.9

To quickly analyse the results - it is pretty undeniable that women receive fewer nominations than men. 60% of nominees were male, 40% were female. Equally, black artists received fewer nominations than white artists, 38% to 62%. The next question is whether there is an intersectional angle to this. Since there are fewer black nominees than white, and fewer female than male, we would expect that the least nominees would go to black women. A chi squared test can be used to determine whether two variables such as this are dependent or independent, that is, whether being a black woman is particularly likely to cause you to be not nominated, compared to simply being black and a woman. This hypothesis is not supported by the data at the p<0.05 level (p=0.063), but is not far off.

Minaj, however, was mainly complaining about not being nominated for the main award of the night, so I also took a look at this, this time over the last 10 years of nominations to get more data. In this category, women are no longer under-represented, the numbers are almost exactly 50:50. This, however, is due to an increase in the representation of white women compared to white men, black women stay at the same percentage as the were in nominations as a whole. Minaj, therefore, might have a point here; compared to the general nominations, in the main category the judges look more favourably on white women at the expense of white men, but not on black women at the expense of black men. A chi squared test again does not find that the variables are dependent (p=0.125), but the sample size is lower, so significance would be harder to come by.

Best Video Nominations

	Black	White
Male	12	13.5	25.5
Female	7	19.5	26.5
	19	33	52

Best Video Nominations Percentages (rounded)

	Black	White
Male	23.1	26.0	49.1
Female	13.5	37.5	51.0
	36.6	63.5	52

To compare our results to the general population*, it is obvious that women are underrepresented in the nominations as a whole. Black artists, however, seem to be over-represented. Only 13% of the US population are black, while 38% of those nominated were. Even black women as a group make up 14% of nominations, compared to likely around 7% of the general population. In spite of the female disadvantage, the advantage that comes from being black pushes them above the expected level. White men, meanwhile, are nominated at a similar frequency to their population in the US. There are several possible explanations for this. It is possible that through some sort of combination of genetic, environmental and cultural factors black musicians are on average objectively more talented, or at least more appealing to the general public. In this case the judges may be expressing statistical discrimination in favour of black artists. It is also possible the judges simply particularly like black artists, and therefore expressing taste based discrimination. Both these points also apply to female artists.

Is is possible, however, that the general US population is not the correct reference to use. It may be a better idea to compare nominations against all music artists who sold a certain number of records, or who got a certain number of youtube views. I cannot therefore rule out that the number of black female artists out of all successful artists is considerably higher than their number the general population and their representation in the VMA awards, and that they are being discriminated against by the judges.

If anyone wants my full figures, or is better at stats than me and fancies doing some cool stuff with it, I'll send them across.

*Not all nominees were from the USA, but most were, and most overseas nominees were from countries with a lower minority population.

 ---

Update: Since I can't get enough of this, I took a look at the winners as well, to see if this reveals any bias. It is possible, of course, that the judges are choosing winners in a way prejudiced in favour of a particular group. This data covers 2009-1014.

VMA Winners

	Black	White
Male	13.5	34	47.5
Female	16.5	32.5	49
	30	66.5

Percentage of VMA Winners

	Black	White
Male	14.0	35.2	49.2
Female	17.0	33.7	50.7
	31	68.9

The actual winners are more gender balanced than the nominees. Overall a similar number of men and women won awards, in spite of men getting more nominations. Once nominated, therefore, women have a much larger chance of winning the award than men (see below). It is therefore possible that women are discriminated against in deciding on nominees, but this is then redressed when deciding a winner. That is, lots of extra low quality male artists are nominated.

With regards race, black artists are less likely to win than white artists once nominated. This, however, is driven solely by a lower percentage of black men winning. Black women nominated for awards actually have the highest chance of winning out of all groups, though this is very similar to that of white women. The percentage of winners is still higher than their numbers in the general population, but that does suggest there could be some bias by judges against black male artists in deciding on a winner.

Percentage of Nominees Who Won

	Black	White
Male	10.1	18.0
Female	22.4	22.2

Black	White	Men	Women
14.5	19.8	14.7	22.3

#teamtaytay