The Gender of Audience Building: Televised Coverage of Women's and Men's NCAA Basketball

A Sex Difference in the Predisposition for Physical Competition: Males Play Sports Much More than Females Even in the Contemporary U.S

“…For example, compared to boys, girls may still receive less childhood sports encouragement [110] or lack role models of professional athletes (see [111], [112]). Although these and related hypotheses certainly warrant attention, it is difficult to conceive of practical methods for assessing them, particularly because individuals and their environments interact.…”

NCAA March Madness: An Investigation of Gender Coverage inUSA Todayduring the NCAA Basketball Tournaments

“…While scholars have focused on gender coverage provided throughout the entire March Madness event, recent research has emphasized the importance of examining the gender coverage differences during the Final Four and Championships games (Billings, Halone, & Denham, 2002;Hallmark & Armstrong, 1999;Messner, Duncan, & Jensen, 1996). In an early content analysis of the 1993 NCAA Basketball Final Four, Messner et al (1996) determined that the men's event was framed as a historic event and the women's event was framed as a nonevent. Similarly, Hallmark and Armstrong (2002) demonstrated that men received different coverage benefits in production when in comparison with women (e.g., techniques-camera angles, cutaways).…”

“…The purpose of the research is to build upon past content analysis gender research by examining the coverage provided to men's and women's basketball teams in USA Today during the NCAA Basketball Championships. In addition to focusing on the Final Four and Championship coverage (Messner et al, 1996;Hallmark and Armstrong, 1999), the current research attempts to add depth to the literature by investigating gender coverage during the bracket release and Sweet 16/Elite 8 "highlight" issues 1 . Further, the research also offers a necessary perspective when analyzing the data from both equity (NCAA participation) and consumption (NCAA attendance/revenue) standpoints.…”

Assessing Lesbian Gay Bisexual Resistance in Core Team Sports

“…In the fifth theme, writers and commentators made frequent reference to wives, girlfriends and husbands of coaches, however, the partners of lesbian coaches, who were coaching the women's teams, were never mentioned in any of the 508 articles. Messner et al (1996) also found in an analysis of sport news and highlight shows that the electronic media ascribed masculine characteristics to successful athletes in mainstream sport including aggression, assertiveness and heterosexuality.…”

“…On the sport front, from the corporate level, down to those who actually cover games (reporters, editors, and columnists), several studies indicate a pervasive heteronormality, which assumes heterosexuality is the only acceptable norm, and silence on the issue of an openly gay athlete (Coakley, 2009;Kian, et al, 2008;Messner, et al, 1996;Miller et. al., 2011;Zirin, 2008).…”