Abstract
For 3 decades we have tracked and analyzed the quantity and quality of coverage of womenâs and menâs sports in televised news and highlights shows. In this paper, we report on our most recent iteration of the longitudinal study, which now includes an examination of online sports newsletters and social media. The study reveals little change in the quantitative apportionment of coverage of womenâs and menâs sports over the past 30 years. Menâs sportsâespecially the âBig Threeâ of basketball, football and baseballâstill receive the lionâs share of the coverage, whether in-season or out of season. When a womenâs sports story does appear, it is usually a case of âone and done,â a single womenâs sports story obscured by a cluster of menâs stories that precede it, follow it, and are longer in length. Social media posts and online sports newslettersâ coverage, though a bit more diverse in some ways, mostly reflected these same patterned gender asymmetries. Gender-bland sexism continued as the dominant pattern in 2019 TV news and highlightsâ stories on womenâs sports. Three themes of this âgender-blandâ coverage include: 1) nationalism, 2) asymmetrical gender marking coupled with local parochialism, and 3) community service/ charitable contributions.
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