Are the times changing enough? Print media trends across four decades

Abstract

Media analysis is an established area of sport sociology which has been documented by researchers systematically since the 1980s. Some trends have explored the differences between male and female athletes in the print media with significant evidence demonstrating that female athletes do not gain proportional representation and that many strategies employed by journalists traditionally seek to trivialise, sexualise and emphasise the female identity as ‘other’ rather than as athlete. This longitudinal study uniquely documents an analysis of a two week period in the British print media across four decades 1984-2014. This study, grounded in liberal feminism, presents both quantitative and qualitative data and the main quantitative results demonstrate that coverage for female athletes has decreased from 13% to 6.2%. Qualitative themes presented include: relationships, appearance, performance and nationality, the latter emerging as a new theme from the 2014 data set. The results demonstrate that there is little change in amount of representation afforded to female athletes but that there are reporting changes with a greater emphasis on performance and less reliance on appearance. The paper concludes with the position that although sports reporting, in general is on the increase, women athletes are being given less but potentially better coverage

A New Age for Media Coverage of Women’s Sport? An Analysis of English Media Coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

“…This concurs with Crossman et al (2007) and Godoy-Pressland and Griggs (2014) who found that female athletes were depicted as active/ competitive more than they were non-active/posed. In contrast to previous studies which report how women's sport -and especially traditionally 'male-defined' sports -are greatly underrepresented in the media (Biscomb and Matheson, 2017;Cooky et al, 2015), we argue that, unlike for previous FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments, women's football was regarded as a newsworthy subject in the English print media during the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. Our findings show that the England women were widely reported on through articles and images, and in some newspapers, were deemed important enough for front page and/or back page news.…”

“…Professional sportsmen are held as 'exemplars' of 'hegemonic masculinity' -symbols that have authority despite the fact that most males do not live up to them (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005: 846). This is supported by research highlighting how sport and the mass media maintain male dominance through an overwhelming bias towards male coverage while trivializing female sporting success (Biscomb and Matheson, 2017;Kian et al, 2008), to which we shall now turn.…”

“…An extensive body of research since the 1980s has examined the underrepresentation of women's sport in the mass media, demonstrating how men's sport is generally constructed as the pinnacle of sporting value and achievement and women's sports are considered less worthy of attention (Biscomb and Matheson, 2017;Bruce, 2015;Hargreaves, 1994;Godoy-Pressland, 2014;Godoy-Pressland and Griggs, 2014;Wensing and Bruce, 2003). Studies have also found that the type of sporting activity influences the amount of media coverage it receives.…”

“…Kian et al (2008) discuss how the exclusion and trivialization of female athletes and women's sports are major themes that consistently emerge in research. Thus, where sportswomen do receive media coverage they are often trivialized by: focusing on their physical characteristics or describing them as sex objects; emphasizing femininity; minimizing their accomplishments and skill level through unfavourable comparisons with men; and/or discussing their personal lives or using denigrating humour (Biscomb and Matheson, 2017;Christopherson et al, 2002;Kane et al, 2013). The sexualization of female athletes has important implications for the promotion of women's sport.…”

“…This article examines English print media coverage of the England national women's football (soccer) team during the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. Studies have consistently demonstrated that male and female athletes are portrayed differently in newspapers as well as other media (Biscomb and Matheson, 2017;Cooky et al, 2015). Women's sport is greatly underrepresented and where such coverage does occur, a number of techniques are used to devalue their sporting achievements (Christopherson et al, 2002;Kian et al, 2008).…”