Two Sides of the Chinese Sports Media Story: Contrasting State-Owned and Commercially Sponsored Chinese Websites by Nation and Sex of Athlete

Abstract

This study content analyzed news coverage of two state-owned and two commercially sponsored Chinese sports websites over a 14-day period, focusing on issues of nationality and biological sex. Examining 3,417 news stories and 2,327 news images, this study found that the online sports coverage on state and commercial media can be largely divergent, with the former prioritizing party-state ideology and the latter pursuing commercial profits. Compared to the state websites, the commercial websites tended to provide foreign athletes or teams more coverage, whereas the sexualization of women athletes on commercial websites was significant, yet virtually nonexistent on state websites.

How are elite female athletes framed on China’s mainstream media: The case of Li Na

“…Studies specifically focused on individual women sports are very few since East nationalism and collectivism are valued more highly than individualism in Asia [20] [26]. Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, who are both frequently investigated by Western scholars only primarily serve to symbolize Western ideals.…”

Representation of Sportswomen in the Online Version of Ukrainian Daily Newspaper “Segodnya”

“…Situation with women's sport coverage changes during Olympic Games when media pay more attention to compatriot women athletes and gender is outweighed by national pride for sport achievements (Vincent et al 2018;Billings et al 2019;Scott et al 2019). Billings et al (2014) examined coverage of Olympics by NBC and revealed that during 2012 Games «the first time women received more overall clock-time than men, the first time women tallied more appearances than men in the most-mentioned athletes category, and the first time women athletes received more overall mentions than male athletes.» The researchers explain the salience of women athletes in the air by the fact that women's team surpassed the achievements of men's team and won more medals.…”

“…The bulk of research on female athletes' media representation concerns the United States and Western European countries, although there is as well research about situation in Central European countries (Antunovic 2019;Jakubowska 2015;Jakubowska et al 2016;Mazur et al 2018), in Asia (Billings et al 2019;Xue et al 2018), Australia and New Zealand (Sherry et al 2016;Yip 2018), and Africa (Nieland and Horky 2013). All of them confirm the thesis of low presence of women's sport in media.…”

Women, men, and five Olympic rings: An examination of Chinese Central Television’s broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

“…Compared to many Western countries, Chinese sports media were found to render more attention to women's sports. For instance, Billings et al (2018b) examined the gendered coverage of Chinese sports websites, finding that commercial-sponsored sports media devoted 10.2% of news stories to female athletic figures, with the percentage in state-owned sports websites rising to 16.8%. In terms of images, state-owned sports websites offered 7.8% of the total number of images to female athletic figures, while the percentage in commercial-sponsored sports websites was 37.0%.…”