Deuce or advantage? Examining gender bias in online coverage of professional tennis

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of women's sports, it has generally been found that female athletes receive less media coverage and are portrayed negatively with myriad gender-specific descriptors. Such biased representations warrant attention as they construct and reinforce traditional gender beliefs. This study compared the representations of female and male tennis players on the official site of the Australian Open 2015 and ESPN. A total of 357 articles were analysed using content analysis. The findings showed that gender representations on the two media outlets were quite similar as they both portrayed female players more negatively than male players by focusing on a few areas directly or indirectly: athletic weaknesses, negative skills, mental weaknesses and non-competitive roles (including appearance, attire, family and personal relationship). However, the use of certain descriptors might indicate the possibility of more gender-neutral representations of athletes in the future. It was concluded that while hegemonic masculinity was challenged at times, stereotypical beliefs about females were largely reinforced in the mediated gender representations on the two websites.

Stereotyping by omission and commission: Creating distinctive gendered spectacles in the televised coverage of the 2015 Australian Open men’s and women’s tennis singles semi-finals and finals

“…Crossman et al, 2007). Yip's (2016) analysis of online coverage of the same event showed similar trends, with narratives of women focusing on athletic and mental weaknesses and personal factors, such as appearance and relationships.…”

“…The 2015 Australian Open was a particularly interesting event for the study of media representations of gender. The social media uproar that followed ‘Twirlgate’ put the media in general, and announcers in particular, under the spotlight for the remainder of the tournament (Yip, 2016). The world was watching for any sign of sexism and we assume that announcers were particularly careful with regard to how they spoke about women.…”

“…In the present study we examine the footage of the finals and semi-finals, exploring how male and female players were represented by announcers in the matches themselves along similar dimensions to those identified by Yip (2016). We also explore how gender differences are discursively constructed by what is left unsaid about women compared to men (and vice-versa) through stereotyping by omission .…”

“…This tournament is, therefore, an important arena for studying the way that gender is represented by the media while under scrutiny. Yip (2016) explored the representations of female and male players at this event in online media over the course of the 2015 Australian Open and found that female players were portrayed more negatively than male players, with descriptions of women focusing on athletic weaknesses, negative aspects of skills, and off-court features such as their appearance and off-court relationships. Male players were more often described focusing on positive features of their athleticism, power and skill.…”

“…In this paper, we analyse announcers’ speech (including play-by-play announcers and colour commentators) in televised coverage of both the men’s and women’s game at the 2015 Australian Open. This particular tournament was marked by international media controversy after two female players were asked to ‘twirl’ after their matches to show off their outfits (Yip, 2016). We explore how announcers’ talk produces distinctive gendered spectacles for men’s and women’s tennis and the ways in which meaningful absences may communicate gender stereotypes in tennis (Hills and Kennedy, 2006) in what Billig (1998) calls stereotyping by omission .…”