(Broad)casting a Wider Net: Clocking Men and Women in the Primetime and Non-Primetime Coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics

Abstract

This study analyzed the frequency with which the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic broadcasts featured men and women athletes. To understand these portrayals, all 557 hr and 15 min of National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) 2018 Winter Olympic telecasts were recorded. This recorded content included the 62 hr and 30 min of NBC’s primetime program and, for the first time, all of the remaining non-NBC primetime coverage on NBC’s other networks. Women athletes received the majority of the clock time on the NBC primetime broadcast; however, men received significantly more clock time on the remaining Olympic telecasts. Additionally, for both sets of broadcasts, differences were found between the amount of coverage for men and women athletes by sport. Through the lens of agenda-setting theory, potential reasons and ramifications for the different trends of coverage by broadcast are discussed.

#Gramming Gender: The Cognizance of Equality on Instagram Accounts of Prominent NCAA Athletic Departments

“…A survey of scholarship suggests these in-house platforms are among the few spaces where gender balance occurs (B. D. Cooper & Cooper, 2009;Cunningham & Sagas, 2002;Cunningham et al, 2004). There are other instances where more balanced coverage has been observed, but they are often relegated to large international sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup (Arth et al, 2019;A. Billings & Angelini, 2019;Petty & Pope, 2019;Sherwood et al, 2017;Wolter, 2015).…”

Shared Space: How North American Olympic Broadcasters Framed Gender on Instagram

“…Historically, Olympic research found that female athletes were underrepresented in event coverage and framed along gender stereotypes (Angelini & Billings, 2010;Billings et al, 2009Billings et al, , 2013Dyreson, 1996;Hardin et al, 2004;Mishra, 2014). In recent years, researchers found that televised Olympic coverage is more balanced (Arth et al, 2019;Billings & Angelini, 2019;Sherwood et al, 2017). The purpose of the current study is to determine whether recent trends toward more balanced gender frames extend to the digital content produced and shared on the social media platforms (SMPs) of North American official Olympic broadcasters.…”

A Longitudinal Analysis of espnW: Almost 10 Years of Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity

“…The clock time for men and women for the 2002–2018 Winter Games was starkly different in earlier years, with men at about 65% and women at about 35%, and has progressed to an almost even split, with women overtaking men in the 2018 coverage (Billings & Angelini, 2019). Percentages can vary with prime time versus nonprime time coverage, as female athletes received more prime time coverage (52.2%) but less nonprime time coverage (41.4%) than men in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games (Arth, Hou, Rush, & Angelini, 2018).…”