Suchergebnisse

Over the last few decades, scholars have dedicated much attention to the coverage of sportswomen in the media. However, few of these studies are situated within the Central Eastern European context. In this study, I analyze the textual and visual coverage of sportswomen in the Hungarian monthly sports magazine Presztízs Sport and examine the ways in which Hungarian national identity is articulated through discourses of sport, athletic competence, and womanhood. This sports magazine reflects some of the global patterns in the representation of sportswomen, but also distinguishes athletes based on the sport's historical success in Hungary. Further, it positions the családanya, the "family-mother" as a gender ideal that transcends other representation categories. The maternal athletic body affirms conservative values and contributes to the aspirations of nation-building through both reproduction and elite sporting success.

Researchers have documented patterns in sports media coverage across a variety of geographical and media contexts extensively, but relatively few studies focus on the Central and Eastern European region. This study examines the agenda diversity of European public service media in Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia on their sport-related Facebook accounts during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. A content analysis identified featured sports, gender balance, and the role of national interest in the events and athletes represented. Sports agenda diversity was driven by the hegemony of men's football and national success at the Olympics. Gender imbalance in media coverage persists in the region even on public service broadcasters' social media accounts. Women received coverage only when representing the home nation at an Olympic event. The hegemony of men's football is a transnational phenomenon, while Olympic coverage emphasizes sports that share historical associations with national identity. Sports agenda diversity in the three countries is heterogeneous and regionally distinct. In practice, broadcasters might temporarily minimize gender imbalance in Olympic coverage, but in ways that routinizes the national focus. Theoretical developments in agenda setting in coverage of international events should account both for transnational patterns in public service media in the region and local particularities.

The notion of sports fandom is generally built on the ways men understand and relate to sport. In this research, we explore how women, who come together in an online place, define and understand sport with the goal of better understanding female fandom. Using Coakley's ((2004) Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. New York: McGraw-Hill) framework for conceptualizing sport and Lenskyj's ((1994) Women, Sport, and Physical Activity: Selected Research Themes. Gloucester, ON, Canada: Sport Information Resource Centre for Sport Canada) feminist approaches to competition, we analyzed the profiles of women bloggers who write about sports in two online communities, BlogHer and Women Talk Sports, to examine their relationship to sport from a feminist perspective. The analysis suggests that women's interest is predominantly reflected, not through consumption, but through participation. In addition, women in these networks complicated dominant ideologies about the role of sport as many of them considered participation and competition as a site for building connections and empowering other women. Finally, women who wrote about sport fandom engaged in the construction of "woman's perspective" on men's sports and in advocacy of women's sports. We argue that these women bloggers offer an alternative approach and, thus, may challenge the masculine understanding of performance-oriented institutionalized sports.

With the emergence of the blogosphere, women have gained a unique opportunity to share their experiences. This study explored the formation of self and the conceptualization of sports in the "Sports Blog" directory of BlogHer, a women's blog network. A content analysis of 449 profiles in the directory revealed that women bloggers tend to use blogging to document personal experiences of participation in sports and to provide resources for others about physical activity, health, and fitness. Women's active and participatory relationship with sports defies both stereotypical representations of women in mainstream sports media and hegemonic masculine discourses replicated in the blogosphere. We suggest that women who blog about sports challenge assumptions about sports consumption and engagement in sports. This study offers an alternative conceptualization of sports blogging as well as a broader understanding of the role of sports in women's lives.

In 2013, ESPN launched a series of documentaries to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title IX. The Nine for IX documentaries tell stories of successful women in sport and tackle pertinent gender- and sex-related issues, promising to teach popular audiences about the untold histories of women's sport. Because of the series' place in ESPN's marketing efforts to reach women, we consider the series as ideological work through which women's sport history is constructed. Drawing on feminist sport scholarship, we argue that the Nine for IX films fall short of their promised socially conscious and educational potential. Instead of interrogating broader webs of power, the series overwhelmingly relies upon individualized, depoliticized, and postfeminist narratives that relegate efforts toward gender equality to the past. The series is, thus, a reflection of ESPN's larger problems with representations of women's sport.

This study surveyed sports editors about gender-related issues in hiring and coverage. Although many editors estimate reader interest to be low and do not believe coverage of women's sports should be improved, results also suggest that sports editors' values and beliefs have shifted over the past decade in ways that could lead to more opportunities for women journalists and to eventual improvements in coverage of female athletes and women's sports. The research also suggests when sports editors commit to hiring women, they find women who can move up within organizations and become leaders.

This book highlights the progress-or lack thereof-in media regarding portrayals of women, across genres and cultures within the twenty-first-century. Both original studies and descriptive overviews of current media platforms are included, as top scholars evaluate the portrayals of women in contemporary venues, including advertisements, videogames, political stories, health communication and reality television.