An Examination of the Current State of Female Athlete Media Coverage 公开

Huggins, Victoria (Spring 2022)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/t722hb13h?locale=zh
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Abstract

The study uses content analysis to examine sixty sports articles written by the collegiate media in order to determine whether gendered themes of mass sports media exist within the youngest generation of sports writing. The research examines sports articles from two established collegiate media sources, the Emory Wheel and the Johns Hopkins News-Letter and analyzes the sixty articles for written and visual elements such as gender marking, trivialization, comparison of female athletes to male athletes and apologetic strategies. The literary background research on collegiate and mass media sports writing produces fifteen testable hypotheses that are all examined in the methodology and results sections. The research is critical in the understanding of how gender differences in sport mass media are continuously changed throughout each new cycle of sports writers arriving from the collegiate media. The research also examines the importance of sports leadership positions within both the mass and collegiate media and calls for improvement in staffing for these roles. Collegiate media produces the next generation of sports writers and society must examine the work at this level for a full understanding of mass media’s development and current state. The study is a fresh examination of both the progress and and the failure of modern sports writers in representing female athletes at an adequate and equitable level in comparison to their male counterparts. 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction.........................................................................................1

Literature Review..................................................................................2

Gender......................................................................................2

Hegemony Theory...............................................................3

Gendertyping.....................................................................4

Apologetic Strategies...........................................................5

Doing Gender.....................................................................6

Body Image........................................................................6

Athletic Identity..................................................................7

Media Coverage...........................................................................8

Coverage Inequality..............................................................8

Framing Theory...................................................................9

Impact on Societal Values...................................................10

Hegemonic Masculinity......................................................10

Sexualization.....................................................................11

Infantilization....................................................................11

Gender Marking..................................................................12

Gendered Coverage.............................................................12

Ambivalence.......................................................................13

Trivialization......................................................................14

Comparisons to Men............................................................14

Photo Coverage...................................................................15

Sexual Objectification..........................................................15

Sports Media Educational Flaws............................................17

Progression.........................................................................18

Hypotheses............................................................................................18

Methods................................................................................................19

Research Design............................................................................19

Sample.........................................................................................20

Operationalization and Measures....................................................21

Data Collection..............................................................................21

Data Analysis.................................................................................22

Results..................................................................................................22

Conclusions...........................................................................................27

References.............................................................................................30

Tables and Figures..................................................................................34 

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