ESPN—The Women's Sports Network? A Content Analysis of Internet Coverage of March Madness

The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to determine if gender-specific descriptors regularly found in television and newspaper sport coverage were present in two popular online sites from the emerging medium of Internet sport journalism. Descriptors given to players and coaches during the 2006 NCAA Division I women's and men's basketball tournaments by ESPN Internet and CBS SportsLine were examined. Results contradicted gender-specific descriptors found in previous studies on sport media coverage that scholars have argued help uphold hegemonic masculinity in sport.

[1]  Mary Jo Kane,et al.  The Social Construction of Gender Difference and Hierarchy in Sport Journalism — Few New Twists on Very Old Themes , 1992 .

[2]  Karen H. Weiller,et al.  Gender Bias In The 1996 Olympic Games , 2003 .

[3]  M. Messner,et al.  Silence, Sports Bras, And Wrestling Porn , 2003 .

[4]  Making room in the lineup: newspaper web sites face growing competition for sports fans' attention. , 2008 .

[5]  Linda Jean Kensicki,et al.  An Imperceptible Difference: Visual and Textual Constructions of Femininity in Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated for Women , 2002 .

[6]  J. Morahan-Martin.  Males, females, and the Internet. , 1998 .

[7]  Dianne Jones.  Half the Story? Olympic Women on ABC News Online , 2004 .

[8]  Kimberly A. Neuendorf,et al.  The Content Analysis Guidebook , 2001 .

[9]  Dale Spender,et al.  Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace , 1996 .

[10]  Laurel Davis.  The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated , 1997 .

[11]  Liesbet van Zoonen,et al.  Gendering the Internet Claims, Controversies and Cultures , 2002 .

[12]  Marie Hardin,et al.  Challenge and Conformity on “Contested Terrain”: Images of Women in Four Women’s Sport/Fitness Magazines , 2005 .

[13]  Mark Deuze,et al.  The Web and its Journalisms: Considering the Consequences of Different Types of Newsmedia Online , 2003, New Media Soc..

[14]  M. Duncan.  Gender Warriors in Sport: Women and the Media , 2006 .

[15]  Thomas J. Johnson,et al.  Have new media editors abandoned the old media ideals? The journalistic values of online newspaper editors , 2003 .

[16]  Margaret Carlisle Duncan,et al.  Denial of Power in Televised Women’s Sports , 1988 .

[17]  R. Weber.  Basic content analysis, 2nd ed. , 1990 .

[18]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[19]  Victor A. Matheson,et al.  An Economic Slam Dunk or March Madness? Assessing the Economic Impact of the NCAA Basketball Tournament , 2003 .

[20]  Warren A. Whisenant,et al.  The Current State of Women Print Journalists: An Analysis of the Status and Careers of Females in Newspapers Sports Departments , 2005 .

[21]  R. Weber.  Basic Content Analysis , 1986 .

[22]  Bryan E. Denham,et al.  "Man, That Was a Pretty Shot": An Analysis of Gendered Broadcast Commentary Surrounding the 2000 Men's and Women's NCAA Final Four Basketball Championships , 2002 .

[23]  Brad Schultz,et al.  Sports Journalists Who Blog Cling to Traditional Values , 2007 .

[24]  John Harris,et al.  Femininity, Masculinity, Physicality and the English Tabloid Press , 2002 .

[25]  Marie Hardin,et al.  The Framing of Sexual Difference in SI for Kids Editorial Photos , 2002 .

[26]  Marie Hardin.  Stopped at the Gate: Women's Sports, “Reader Interest,” and Decision Making by Editors , 2005 .

[27]  Linda Shields,et al.  Content Analysis , 2015 .

[28]  R. Elueze,et al.  A Quest for Equality : A Gender Comparison of the BBC’s TV Coverage of the 1995 World Athletics Championships , 1998 .

[29]  Angela Lumpkin,et al.  An analysis of Sports Illustrated feature articles, 1954-1987 , 1991 .

[30]  G. Cunningham,et al.  Internet coverage of university softball and baseball web sites: the inequity continues. , 2000 .

[31]  O. Holsti.  Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities , 1969 .

[32]  Mary Jo Kane,et al.  Media coverage of the post Title-IX female athlete: A feminist analysis of sport, gender, and power , 1996 .

[33]  S. Turkle.  Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet , 1997 .

[34]  D. Stotlar,et al.  Fundamentals of Sport Marketing , 1996 .

[35]  M. Real.  Sports Online: The Newest Player in Mediasport , 2006 .

[36]  Using a Content Analysis to Examine the Gendering of Sports Newspaper Personnel and Their Coverage , 2003 .

[37]  Michael A. Messner,et al.  SEPARATING THE MEN FROM THE GIRLS: , 1993 .

[38]  Susan Tyler Eastman,et al.  Biased Voices of Sports: Racial and Gender Stereotyping in College Basketball Announcing , 2001 .

[39]  J. Vincent.  Game, sex, and match: the construction of gender in British newspaper coverage of the 2000 Wimbledon Championships. , 2004 .

[40]  R. Collier.  Masculinities , 2002 .

[41]  M. Lombard,et al.  Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability , 2002 .

[42]  James W. Carey,et al.  Intercoder Agreement in Analysis of Responses to Open-Ended Interview Questions: Examples from Tuberculosis Research , 1996 .

[43]  M. Kian.  GENDER IN SPORTS WRITING BY THE PRINT MEDIA: AN EXPLORATORY EXAMINATION OF WRITERS' EXPERIENCES AND ATTITUDES , 2007 .

[44]  P. Pedersen,et al.  Strategic Sport Communication , 2007 .

[45]  Richard N. Armstrong,et al.  Gender equity in televised sports: A comparative analysis of men's and women's NCAA division I basketball championship broadcasts, 1991–1995 , 1999 .

[46]  M. Messner,et al.  The Gender of Audience Building: Televised Coverage of Women's and Men's NCAA Basketball* , 2001 .

[47]  Paul M. Pedersen,et al.  Analysing the print media coverage of professional tennis players: British newspaper narratives about female competitors in the Wimbledon Championships , 2007 .

[48]  James T. Johnson,et al.  A Comparison of Selected ‘Serious’ and ‘Popular’ British, Canadian, and United States Newspaper Coverage of Female and Male Athletes Competing in the Centennial Olympic Games , 2002 .

[49]  Antonio Gramsci.  Selections from the prison notebooks , 2020, The Applied Theatre Reader.

[50]  Cindy Royal.  Framing the Internet , 2008 .