Framing Differences in Gender-Related Sport Coverage by Internet Sites and Newspapers

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Framing Differences inGender-Related Sport
Coverageby Internet Sitesand Newspapers

• Presented by Edward (Ted) M. Kian, Ph.D.
• University of Central Florida
• Sport Leadership and Coaching
• The International Symposium on Online Journalism,
  April 17-18, 2009, Austin, TX

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New Media

• New media are changing the way news is gathered,
  distributed, accessed, and consumed (Shultz
  Sheffer, 2007).
• Internet readers tend to be younger than other
  media consumers. The Internet has now surpassed
  newspapers as a primary news source for
  Americans, and rivals television as the
  predominant news source for U.S. youth (Pew
  Research, 2008).

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Research on Sport Media

• Content and textual analyses on magazine,
  newspaper, and television sport coverage over the
  past 35 years have generally shown men receive
  more overall coverage than women at all levels of
  sport (e.g., Bishop, 2003 Eastman Billings,
  2000 Kian, 2008).

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Research on Sport Media

• Sport media often frame female athletes as sex
  objects, are more likely to delve into the
  personal lives of women in sport, and minimize
  their accomplishments and skill by regularly
  comparing their abilities to men
• (Hardin et al., 2005 Vincent, 2004).

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Framing

• Framing is a term regularly employed to describe
  the means through which journalists make sense of
  news events by selecting facts and embedding them
  in storylines. Media not only determine which
  stories are newsworthy, but also the ways in
  which those news events are framed and portrayed
• (Kuypers, 2002 Lind Salo, 2002).

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Research on Sport Media

• Historically, in most of the world, sport has
  served as a hegemonic institution, helping to
  preserve the power of men over women (Schell
  Rodriguez, 2000).
• Numerous scholars contended the institutions of
  sport and mass media are two of the primary
  forces reinforcing hegemonic masculinity in
  Western society (e.g., Connell, 1990 Duncan
  Messner, 1998 Kian Hardin, 2009).

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Purpose

• A challenge to the traditional framing of mens
  and womens sport by mainstream media may be
  emerging with the increasing prevalence of the
  Internet.
• Several authors have found the community nature
  of the Internet is more accommodating to women
  than traditional forms of communication
• (e.g., Royal, 2008 Spender, 1995 Turkle, 1995).

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Purpose

• However, research on Internet sport media is in
  its infancy (Real, 2006). The few published
  studies on gender have provided mixed results
  (e.g., Cunningham, 2003 Kian et al., in press
  Jones, 2004 Sagas et al. 2000).
• None of those published works compared Internet
  content of female athletes with coverage of
  womens sport through more traditional mediums.

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Purpose

• This study attempts to determine if any
  significant differences are present in how more
  traditional media (newspapers) and newer media
  (Internet) use descriptors to frame coverage of
  the same mens and womens sport.
• Since tennis is one of the only sports where the
  womens and mens games have similar levels of
  popularity, the U.S. Open was selected for
  examination.

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Research Questions

• Research questions were employed rather than
  hypotheses for this exploratory study. Three
  overriding research questions guided this study
• RQ1 What significant differences if any
  exist in the gender-specific descriptors used to
  frame newspaper articles on the U.S. Open mens
  tournament, womens tournament, and articles on
  both?

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Research Questions

• RQ2 What significant differences if any
  exist in the gender-specific descriptors used to
  frame Internet articles on the U.S. Open mens
  tournament, womens tournament, and articles on
  both?
• RQ3 What significant differences if any
  exist in the gender-specific descriptors used to
  frame newspaper articles on the U.S. Open mens
  tournament, womens tournament, and articles on
  both compared to descriptors in online sport
  sites on the same tournaments?

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Methodology

• Content analysis of all byline (name of author)
  U.S. Open tennis articles published in three
  daily newspapers (The Los Angeles Times, The New
  York Times, USA Today) and three mainstream
  online sport media sites (ESPN Internet,
  FoxSports.com, SI.com) over a 16-day period in
  fall, 2007.
• Byline articles

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Coding Categories and Procedures

• Text of articles were coded for nine descriptive
  categories derived from pervious research (1)
  physical appearances/attire (2) athletic
  prowess/strengths (3) athletic
  weaknesses/limitations (4) positive skill
  level/accomplishments

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Coding Categories and Procedures

• (5) negative skill level/failures (6) family
  role/personal relationships (7)
  psychological/emotional strengths (8)
  psychological/emotional weaknesses (9) humor.
• Pretest and Intercoder reliability
• Excel ANOVA (alpha0.05) Pairwise comparisons
  Binomial test for proportions

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Assumptions Based on Previous Research

• Womens stories would include more descriptors on
  physical appearances, family roles or personal
  relationships, athletic weaknesses, negative
  skill level or failures, psychological or
  emotional weakness, and humor.

• Mens articles would include more descriptors on
  athletic prowess, positive skill level or
  accomplishments, and psychological or emotional
  strengths (e.g., Billings et al., 2002 Harris
  Clayton, 2002 Kian et al., 2008).

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General Findings
Internet Articles Total Articles of all Articles
Mens Tennis 27 48.2
Womens Tennis 14 25
Both 15 27
Total 56 100
Newspaper Articles Total Articles of all Articles
Mens Tennis 57 41.9
Womens Tennis 26 19.1
Both 53 39
Total 136 100
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RQ1 and RQ 2

• For all newspaper articles examined, pairwise
  comparisons showed results mostly reinforcing
  previous sport media research.
• Among the 10 significant differences, the only
  unexpected results were humor was significantly
  more likely to be used in articles about mens
  tennis than articles on womens tennis or on both
  genders.
• Coding and pairwise comparisons of Internet
  articles offered mixed results that overall did
  not reinforce traditional stereotypes in sport
  media coverage as assumed, since only five of the
  11 significant findings were expected.
• Both as a category impacting results

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RQ3

• When comparing newspaper and Internet articles
  only on mens tennis, online articles were
  significantly more likely to use descriptors on
  psychological strengths and physical weaknesses,
  while newspapers significantly used more
  descriptors on family roles and humor.
• For articles solely on womens tennis, newspapers
  were significantly more likely to employ
  descriptors on physical appearances, athletic
  weaknesses, and family roles. Online articles
  were more likely to use attributes on positive
  skill level, psychological strengths, and
  psychological weaknesses on womens tennis.

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RQ3

• In articles focusing on both mens and womens
  tennis, the binomial tests for two proportions
  showed newspapers were significantly more likely
  to use descriptors on athletic prowess, athletic
  weakness, and family roles. Internet sites used
  significantly more descriptors per article for
  positive skill level and negative skill level in
  articles on both genders.

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Discussion

• Results for descriptors within newspaper articles
  reinforced the plethora of previous
  gender-related sport media research, minimizing
  the athleticism of women and trivializing their
  accomplishments.
• Results within Internet articles were mixed but
  did not represent a significant challenge to
  traditional framing of mens and womens sport.
• However, comparisons between mediums showed
  Internet articles were significantly more likely
  to alter the ways media frame female athletes
  than were newspaper articles.
• Thus, hegemonic masculinity was challenged far
  more in online articles.

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Limitations/Delimitations

• This research only examined six major media
  outlets, and focused on one mens and womens
  sport played at the highest level.
  Generalizations cannot be made from examining six
  sport news outlets based in the United States,
  where tennis is not construed as an overly
  masculine sport.
• These six newspapers or online sites are all very
  popular, national outlets. However, no smaller,
  or regional outlets were examined. Therefore, the
  scope of this research may have been too broad.