Scheduled for Poster Session: Research Strands Across the Alliance, Thursday, April 10, 2008, 3:15 PM - 4:45 PM, Convention Center: Exhibit Hall, Reseach Consortium Poster Sessions


Gender Equity and foxsports.com: NCAA D1 Basketball Tournament Coverage Analysis

Stacy L. Sanders1, Judy C. Peel2 and Heidi Grappendorf1, (1)North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, (2)NC State University, Raleigh, NC

Previous research (Sage, 1998; Coakley, 2004, Billings & Eastman, 2003; Kane 1996) concluded that women, based upon societal views within gender ideology, are trivialized and underrepresented throughout the mediation of sports. This study investigated the media representation between males and females from the online website foxsports.com during the 2007 NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament. This study followed an existing methodology (Shifflett & Revelle, 1994 & Cunningham, Sagas, Satore, Amsden, & Schellhase, 2004), as data was collected for six days three times a day from the websites dedicated to both men and women's college basketball produced by Fox Sports. To date, there has been limited analysis of the equality of sport media coverage of online sports websites, and in particular during the men's and women's NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament. A need to perform an analysis is important so matters of inequality can be addressed if under representation is found. By conducting this study, online sports websites can see exactly where inequalities lie and hopefully correct the problem to report equally on men's and women's athletic online coverage. For the coding process of text content, the articles were coded as (a) factual information related to athletics, (b) factual information not related to athletics, (c) personal information related to athletics, (d) personal information not related to athletics. For photographs, the coding categories included (a) competing athlete, (b) athlete in competitive context but not competing, (c) head shot of the athlete(s) or coach(es), (d) head shot of a person other than an athlete or coach (i.e. administrator or mascot), (e) a group photograph of persons other than players or coaches (e.g., committee members or fans), and (f) other (Cunningham et al., 2004). Descriptive statistics (f; %) were calculated through cross tabulations to show the percent differences between the independent variables, gender, and dependent variables, category type, for both the articles and photographs. In addition, a Pearson's chi-square (X2) test was run for research question 1 to test any significant difference between paragraph types among genders. Results, consistent with previous research (Huffman, Tuggle, & Rosengard, 2004; Knight & Giuliano, 2002; Shifflett & Revelle, 1994) indicated that men received more coverage in terms of more paragraph and photo counts. Interestingly, the types of paragraphs attributed to women were mostly factual information related to athletics while the men's paragraphs, included mostly personal information related to athletics.
Keyword(s): gender issues, sport topics

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