Sport Media Vectors: Gender and Diversity, Reconstructing the Field

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Doctoral Candidates ◽  
Masters Students

In this book, Walzak, Collura and Vidotto bring together an invited collection of writing from emerging scholars about sports, sports media and equity. We are excited about this work as authors span from undergraduates and Masters students to doctoral candidates from Canada and Ireland. All of us are passionate and excited about the possibilities for equity and radical change that needs to happen across the sports and sports media landscape to make sports truly equitable. This collection reflects the author's personal investments and interest in sports. Chapter themes include racialized sports women, media inequities in women's sports including basketball, soccer and swimming, and personal narratives of disability in sport.

Women's Sports

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Title Ix ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Sex Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
News Networks

Although girls and women account for approximately 40 percent of all athletes in the United States, they receive only 4 percent of the total sport media coverage. SportsCenter, ESPN’s flagship program, dedicates less than 2 percent of its airtime to women. Local news networks devote less than 5 percent of their programming to women’s sports. Excluding Sports Illustrated’s annual "Swimsuit Issue," women appear on just 4.9 percent of the magazine’s covers. Media is a powerful indication of the culture surrounding sport in the United States. Why are women underrepresented in sports media? Sports Illustrated journalist Andy Benoit infamously remarked that women’s sports "are not worth watching." Although he later apologized, Benoit’s comment points to more general lack of awareness. Consider, for example, the confusion surrounding Title IX, the U.S. Law that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal financial assistance. Is Title IX to blame when administrators drop men’s athletic programs? Is it lack of interest or lack of opportunity that causes girls and women to participate in sport at lower rates than boys and men? In Women’s Sports, Jaime Schultz tackles these questions, along with many others, to upend the misunderstandings that plague women’s sports. Using historical, contemporary, scholarly, and popular sources, Schultz traces the progress and pitfalls of women’s involvement in sport. In the signature question-and-answer format of the What Everyone Needs to Know® series, this short and accessible book clarifies misconceptions that dog women’s athletics and offers much needed context and history to illuminate the struggles and inequalities sportswomen continue to face. By exploring issues such as gender, sexuality, sex segregation, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, media coverage, and the sport-health connection, Schultz shows why women’s sports are not just worth watching, but worth playing, supporting, and fighting for.

“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.

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.

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.

Work Routines in Newspaper Sports Departments and the Coverage of Women’s Sports

1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Theberge ◽  
Alan Cronk
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Process Mean ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Work Routines ◽  
The Media ◽  
Sports News ◽  
Limited Coverage

The limited coverage of women in the sports media is not due simply to journalists’ bias against women’s sports. The exclusion is woven into news-workers’ beliefs about the contents of the news and their own methods of uncovering the news. Utilizing data from fieldwork in a U.S. newspaper, this article examines some features of the newspaper production process that read women out of the sports news. In casting the news net, journalists seek subjects that are both deemed newsworthy and able to provide reliable and accessible news material. The advantage enjoyed by men’s sports lies in the assumption of greater public interest and the greater resources of men’s commercial sports that guarantee preferred access to the media. Another practice that biases the sports news is standardization of the contents of the sports section. The range of contents is reduced by regularly covering only certain subjects, again mainly men’s sports. Newsworkers see this standardization as a practical necessity that enables them to do their job. They believe they are printing what their audiences wish to read. Their reliance upon bureaucratic news sources and the standardization of the production process mean that newsworkers routinely define sports news as news about men’s sports.

Study on the Broadcast of Women's Sports in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aswathi Murali ◽  
Amritashish Bagchi
Keyword(s):  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women’S Sports
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