scholarly journals Gender Representation of Athletes in Finnish and Swedish Tabloids

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Laine
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Sporting Events ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Journalism ◽  
Male Athletes ◽  
Winter Olympics ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage

Abstract The study examines quantitatively and qualitatively gender representation in Finnish and Swedish tabloids’ sports coverage during Athens 2004 summer and Turin 2006 winter Olympics. Several media studies argue that sports journalism marginalises women’s sports and sexualises female athletes. The results of this study show that male athletes received more coverage than female athletes in every tabloid, but when the number of domestic participants and their level of success were considered, neither country’s tabloids quantitatively marginalised women’s sports. Qualitative analysis found that research stereotypes showing trivialisation and sexualisation of female athletes were incorrect, with the exception of Finnish tabloids representations of female athletes participating in sports that are considered masculine. For the most part, female athletes were represented in the same way as male athletes. However, it should be emphasised that the material is limited to Olympics coverage: during such major sporting events women are treated more equally, particularly quantitatively.

Anything Can Happen in Women’s Tennis, or Can It? An Empirical Investigation Into Bias in Sports Journalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 216747951989057
Author(s):  
Alice N. Tejkalova ◽  
Ladislav Kristoufek
Keyword(s):  
Female Athletes ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Journalism ◽  
Male Athletes ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Rank Difference ◽  
The Common ◽  
Year 2000

The claim that “anything is possible in women’s sports” frequently employed by both sports journalists and general audiences highlights the widespread perception of a seemingly uncontested truth about female athletes and their (in)ability to perform consistently at peak levels in comparison to male athletes. We focus on this treatment of female athletes in the world of women’s tennis and contest the “common sense” and “experience” justifications of the unpredictability in women’s sports with actual data to reveal clear media bias. Utilising a database of the Association of Tennis Professionals and Women’s Tennis Association tournaments dating back to the late 1960s and covering approximately 225,000 fully described matches, we examine the “anything can happen in women’s tennis” assumption through logistic regression, focusing on the effect of rank differential on the winning probability in the match while controlling for other factors (tournament type and stage, court surface, age differential, and elite players). The results are rather shocking. The women’s matches do not show higher instability or lower predictability at all, but rather the contrary—the men’s matches show lower dependence on the rank difference. The results are robust as checked for data sets of the year 2000 onwards and those including only special events such as Grand Slams.

An Examination of Women’s Sports Coverage on the Twitter Accounts of Local Television Sports Broadcasters

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hull
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Constraints ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Market Size ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Local Television ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage ◽  
Female Sports

This study examines the amount of coverage given to women’s sports by local television sports broadcasters on Twitter. A total of 19,649 tweets from 201 local sports broadcasters throughout the United States were examined using content analytic methods during a constructed 2-week period. Results demonstrated that while a majority of the local sports broadcasters did tweet about women’s sports, these tweets represented only about 5% of the overall number of messages. Further examination demonstrates that female sports broadcasters tweeted about women’s sports less frequently than male sports broadcasters did. Additionally, broadcasters in smaller cities were more likely to report about women’s sports than those in larger cities. While results are consistent with previous research on gender representation on nationally televised highlight shows, these findings are significant because they demonstrate that there is a relationship between gender of broadcaster and market size in relation to the number of tweets about women’s sports. Additionally, data are from Twitter, in which there are no time constraints that would seemingly limit the amount of women’s sports that could be mentioned by a sportscaster.

Newswork, News Values, and Audience Considerations

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 647-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merryn Sherwood ◽  
Angela Osborne ◽  
Matthew Nicholson ◽  
Emma Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
News Values ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Repetitive Nature ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Sports News

Substantial research indicates that women’s sports and female athletes gain only a small fraction of sports media coverage worldwide. Research that has examined why this is the case suggested this can be attributed to three particular factors that govern sports newswork: the male-dominated sports newsroom, ingrained assumptions about readership, and the systematic, repetitive nature of sports news. This study sought to explore women’s sports coverage using a different perspective, exploring cases where women’s sports gained coverage. It identified Australian newspapers that published more articles on women’s sports, relative to their competitors, and conducted interviews with both journalists and editors at these newspapers. It found that small, subtle changes to the three newswork elements that had previously relegated the coverage of women’s sports now facilitated it. This research provides evidence that, at least in some newspapers in Australia, sports newswork has developed to include the coverage of women’s sports.

Website Coverage of NCAA Basketball: Are Women Getting Equal Playing Time?

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Redmond ◽  
Lynn L. Ridinger ◽  
Frederick L. Battenfield
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Male Athletes ◽  
College Basketball ◽  
Main Page ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
The Media ◽  
Playing Time ◽  
Sports News

Opportunities for girls and women to participate in sports have been increasing since the enactment of Title IX; however, the media attention given to female athletes and women’s sports has lagged behind. Media coverage of female athletes has been investigated extensively in newspapers and magazines; however, few studies have examined the attention given to women’s sports on the Internet.This study focused on one sports news website to examine and compared the coverage of female and male athletes and coaches in one specific sport, college basketball. A content analysis was conducted on ESPN.com during the 2007 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments. Results showed that women and men do not receive the same attention on the main page; however, equity was evident when the webpage for women’s college basketball was compared to the webpage for men’s college basketball.

“I Can’t Stand Women’s Sports”: The Perception of Women’s Sports by Polish Sports Journalists

2019 ◽  
pp. 216747951987688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Organista ◽  
Zuzanna Mazur ◽  
Michał Lenartowicz
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
Female Sports ◽  
Socializing Agents

This article analyzes the opinions of Polish male ( n = 18) and female ( n = 18) sports journalists on the representation of women’s sports in media coverage. The surveyed journalists represented journalists from national television stations, radio stations, and press and Internet media. Some of them were working simultaneously in various mass media outlets. In-depth interviews were conducted in various locations in Poland in 2018. An analysis of the journalists’ views from 36 semi-structured interviews indicated a general consensus among the surveyed sports journalists, both male and female, on the inferior status of women’s sports and women’s sports coverage, a negation of need to realign the inequitable coverage of women’s sports and the perception that sports are a neutral institution with respect to gender. The investigated female sports journalists presented more negative and straightforward views on women’s sports than their male colleagues. This article also indicates the minority status of female sports journalists in Poland and their process of socialization in the profession; it discusses the first male socializing agents that introduced and influenced the female journalists with respect to sports as factors that may be responsible for the journalists’ biased belief in the subordinate nature of women’s sports in general and their secondary position in sports media.

Women’s sports coverage remains largely marginalized

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans C. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage

Women’s Sport and Questionable Sex

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
American Women ◽  
Disadvantaged Women ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Testing Policies

This chapter explores how leaders of several international athletic federations worked to quell anxieties about “manly” women competitors by instituting “sex-testing” policies to verify the femaleness of female athletes. Purporting to safeguard women's sport and its participants, the tests have too often disadvantaged women and served as a powerful form of social control that encouraged normative femininity in the context of sport. Although most organizations have since declared an end to sex-testing in their official policies, new forms of surveillance and detection continue to define who counts as a woman in the context of sport. For better or worse, the introduction of the sex-test signified that women's sports were on the rise, and in the 1970s American women went through what many felt was an athletic revolution.

Women, sport and the media: Key elements at play in the shaping of the practice of women in sports journalism in Israel

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Tamir ◽  
Moran Yarchi ◽  
Yair Galily
Keyword(s):  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Journalism ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Female Sports ◽  
The Media ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
Women In Sports Media ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Women In Sports

AbstractThe present study aims to illustrate the points of view of various female sports journalists as they relate the unique and defining experiences within their line of work, intending to identify the key elements at play in the shaping of the practice of women in sports journalism and its impact on the coverage of women’s sports. 17 Israeli female sports journalists were interviewed concurrently, alongside a select number of male editors of various sports sections. In addition, a survey regarding readers’ views on the coverage of women’s sports and a content analysis of sport coverage in national newspapers was conducted. The analysis of the study’s findings and, particularly, of the female sports journalists’ experiences, has even revealed similarities between the place of women in sports media and female presence within combative military units.

Women’s Sports Coverage in Israel: Perception Versus Reality

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Tamir ◽  
Yair Galily
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Editorial Boards ◽  
Extensive Coverage ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Female Sports ◽  
The Media

With a focus on the question of public interest, the study investigated editing considerations of women’s sports coverage in written daily newspapers in Israel. To examine sports readers’ views regarding the coverage of women in sports sections, and to compare them with the views of sports editorial boards, a representative survey was conducted among male and female readers of sports columns and among male and female sports writers responsible for coverage. The research findings indicate a lack of connection between the various ends of the media process. Although sports editors of the 3 biggest dailies in Israel claim that there is little interest in women’s sports among sports column readers, the study found that public interest in women’s sports is far from insignificant. In fact, newspaper consumers who read the sports column would like to see more extensive coverage of women’s sports.

Challenging the gender binary? Male basketball practice players' views of female athletes and women's sports

2018 ◽  
pp. 206-221
Author(s):  
Janet S. Fink ◽  
Nicole M. LaVoi ◽  
Kristine E. Newhall
Keyword(s):  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Women’S Sports
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