A new sporting horizon: a content analysis of Super Netball newspaper coverage

Abstract

A new professional netball competition in 2017 was part of a long-awaited boost for women’s sport in Australia. Netball has a significant footprint across the country, being the nation’s largest female participation team sport, and the national team is the reigning world champion. However, the sport has traditionally been underrepresented in both sports media and academic research. The new league was scheduled on free-to-air television after a landmark broadcast deal and the rise in media coverage reflected the growing commercial and public interest in female sport. As an example of this changing environment, it is important to examine what the coverage of women’s netball involves. This descriptive study utilises a content analysis to explore the newspaper sports reporting of the first season of the Super Netball League. Specifically, it measures the amount and tone of coverage, the types of stories and descriptions employed in articles, including mentions of men’s sport. Data have been collected from 703 articles from 15,335 stories in newspaper sports sections of nine national, metropolitan and regional publications. While newspaper coverage of netball was comparable with other sports in terms of professionalism and content, there was still only a small amount of stories.

A new league, new coverage? Comparing tweets and media coverage from the first season of AFLW

“…They were very rarely portrayed in a sexual way and most frequently portrayed as competitive and successful. (p. vii) This was a finding echoed in Sherry et al (2015) review of images of sportswomen, television coverage of the Rio 2016 Olympics (Xu et al, 2019) and netball coverage (English et al, 2019). Together this indicates that the media coverage of female athletes and women's sport in Australia, when it occurs, is improving.…”

Sports Newsrooms Versus In-House Media: Cheerleading and Critical Reporting in News and Match Coverage

“…Four sports were selected for their popularity in media coverage (Horky & Nieland, 2013), while netball provided a female-dominated sport for comparison. The major football codes of rugby league, rugby union and AFL are the focus of media in winter, while netball follows a similar season, although with considerably smaller amounts of coverage (English et al, 2019). Cricket is the national sport, played in summer, alongside A-League football.…”

Seeking consensus regarding the characteristics of expertise and development requirements across five domains of netball coaching in the United Kingdom

“…Coaches in this context operate in a highly competitive and intense environment where World Ranking and win/loss records are pressing concerns. The increase in media coverage for Netball through television and other social media has placed an added pressure on coaches operating in this domain thus further reinforcing the need to explore the contemporary characteristics of coaching expertise in netball (English, Calder, Pearce, & Kirby, 2019).…”