Gender Representation at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games From an Australian Broadcast Perspective

Abstract

This study examined differences in the Seven Network’s primetime coverage of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games on all of its channels. Over 102 hr of total coverage was analyzed for clock time, name mentions, and the descriptions of athletes by announcers divided by gender. Results found that male athletes received the bulk of the clock time; 13 of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes were men. There were also gender differences in the word for word descriptors of success, failure, physicality, and personality. From a theoretical perspective, results found the framing of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games to favor male Olympians. The top three sports that were broadcast featuring women were ice hockey, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding, which differs from other studies in this line of scholarship, so differences in the sports covered in the Australian context provides a unique context to study the Winter Olympics. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.

Still Battling for Equity: Examining Biological Sex Portrayals Through the Lens of the Gold Coast During Australian Prime Time Coverage of the 2018 Commonwealth Games

“…Thus, it remains to be seen whether the results of Xu et al’s study (2019) are a trend for the Australian coverage of a summer event or whether these were an outlier, as the results of the most-recent Winter Olympics (Scott et al, 2022) found that women only received 31.19% of the coverage. Results of Winter Games’ study mirror those of Toohey (1997) from the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympic Games, who found that women accounted for 32.9% and 29.7% of the coverage.…”

“…Results of their work suggested that American women athletes were being covered more because of their medal winning success for their home nation, which draws in viewers to see the success of their nation at a globally important event (Billings & Angelini). Over a long period in the Australian media context of the Olympic Games coverage, women athletes received far less coverage than male athletes no matter the media platform that was analyzed (Eagleman et al, 2014; Jones, 2013; Lumby et al, 2014; Scott & Kunkel, 2016; Scott et al, 2022; Stoddart, 1994; Toohey, 1997).…”

“…The number of times an athlete is mentioned can send messages to the audience about whom is important or worthy of discussion (Billings & Angelini, 2019). Numerous studies have applied name mentions to measure for salience in the Olympic broadcasts (Angelini et al, 2012; Billings et al, 2018; Scott et al, 2022), which have investigated the frequency of athletes’ names spoken by broadcast employees during the telecasts of these events. The number of name mentions per night is often a metric used to make comparisons between sexes (Billings et al, 2014).…”

“…As there are no known studies quantitatively analyzing the coverage of the Commonwealth Games, previous analyses of the Olympic Games are apt for comparison, as both are multination and multi-sport events. Analyses of the Olympic Games have revealed significant differences in the amount of coverage (clock-time), salience, and description by the biological sex of the athletes in the USA (Billings & Angelini, 2019; Billings et al, 2018), Australia (Scott et al, 2022; Xu et al, 2019), China (Guo & Xu, 2021, Xu et al, 2020) and others (Licen & Billings, 2013; MacArthur et al, 2017).…”

“…Until recently, there has been limited statistical analyses of the coverage of men and women at major sporting events from an Australian perspective. Two studies on the Seven Network’s coverage of Olympic Games have revealed differences in how men and women are portrayed during the 2016 and 2018 Olympics and the statistically significant clock-time differences in a variety of sports (Scott et al, 2022; Xu et al, 2019). Yet, there is a lack of understanding as to how the broadcast of a Commonwealth Games fits within the larger narrative of Australian success at summer-based sporting events where Australia has a lot of success.…”