Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

With the growth of social media, sports networks have new platforms to display content. Previous research has shown a discrepancy between the coverage of men and woman sports (Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013; Duncan & Messner, 1994; Huffman, Tuggle & Rosengard, 2004; Kian, Vincent, & Mondello, 2008). It is hoped, however, that with the rise of social media that women sports would receive more coverage (Street, Chen, Duncan, & Hesterburg, 2016). Past research has also shown that sports media frame female athletes as less combatant and less athletic than male athletes (Hardin, Chance, Dodd, & Hardin, 2002). The purpose of this study is to investigate the depiction of female athletes on the Instagram accounts of the four leading U.S. sports media outlets (ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, and NBC Sports), along with ESPN’s SportsCenter’s Snapchat Discover channel. Based on framing theory (Goffman, 1974) and social role theory (Eagly, 1987), this study analyzed 1,239 images and found that a large significant discrepancy still exist between the coverage of male and female athletes. However, among the images of female athletes, the majority of images depicted them as competing. Furthermore, none of the images treated female athletes as sexual objects.