Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In last century, Chinese female athletes hold up more than “half of the sky ”（Xu,2009）, whether this portrayal adheres to the states of Chines females nowadays is a worthy problem. A qualitative document analysis was conducted on Chinese top mainstream sports newspaper, Soccer News from 1982 to 2016. Based on the framing theory and agenda-building theory, the purpose of the research was to explored how Chinese mainstream media have presented the issue of Chinese women football, and rethink what differences existed between the frames used to describe Chinese women football athletes in different period. The results revealed that coverage of Chinese women football could be divided into four period. Stereotypes and changes were both maintained in Chinese women football athletes’ media portrayals during last 34 years. The themes of coverage mainly focused more on the achievements than others. Research also indicates that the proportion of positive stories has been presented more largely than negative stories because of the requirements of sports policy in China and government’s propaganda.