Search

Michael Phelps was one of the first athletes to openly struggle with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression while still competing. During his career, his perceived identity was tied to his status as an athlete. In retirement, his identity shifted to that of a mental health advocate. This study examines the word choice of newspaper articles on the topic of Phelps and mental health using both social identity and framing theories. Mentions of suicide and seeking help, along with the descriptions of specific types of mental illness and perceived identity assigned to Phelps, were compared between two time periods. Results showed that during Phelps's career, articles were much more likely to discuss his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and not as likely to discuss suicide, seeking help, and depression. After his retirement, articles were more likely to identify Phelps as an advocate and less likely to focus on him as a celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to determine if perceptions of violence related to race, gender and sport will impact audience reactions to domestic violence issues involving an athlete. Specifically, this study will examine how these elements of an athlete's identity could affect his/her perceived image when faced with domestic violence accusations. A 3 (perceived race) X 2 (gender) X 2 (sport) factorial experiment was conducted using a national convenience sample of 626 participants from Qualtrics Panels. Results provided evidence that an athlete's race and gender could have an impact on their perception during domestic violence cases, with the male athlete (regardless of the race of the athlete) and the White athlete (regardless of the gender of the athlete) facing more negative perceptions. Furthermore, the violent nature of the sport did not have an impact on the perceptions of the athlete. This study provides further evidence about the role that gender and race play in how domestic violence is perceived during criminal transgressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consistent finding in studies surrounding sports commentary on white and black athletes is that (a) white athletes are frequently praised for their perceived "intellect" and "'leadership capacity," while (b) black athletes are often praised for being "naturally talented" (Davis & Harris, 1998). A mediated conclusion that one could derive from such findings is that black athletes are expected to succeed athletically; conversely, white athletes are expected to have an innate ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to accomplish their athletic stature. This study examined the broadcast commentary surrounding white and black athletes at the 2000 NCAA Men's and Women's Final Four College Basketball Tournaments. The content analysis of 1,118 descriptors embedded in commentator discourse revealed that, while black athletes continue to be praised for their athleticism and physicality, they also are receiving a greater number of comments about their intelligence and ability to lead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined Chinese and US newspaper coverage of the controversial performance of female Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen during 2012 London Summer Olympics. While Ye won two gold medals, the ease in which she did so led to doping suspicions in Western media. Analysis of 222 articles from the US and China revealed sharp differences between the two countries’ amount of coverage about Ye, highlighting the valence and usage pattern of information sources as well. US coverage of Ye Shiwen was not as extensive as in China, and gender and nationality-based dialogues were present in newspaper reports. US coverage showed more skepticism on the doping issue; meanwhile, Chinese coverage exhibited a strong desire to protect its national image and national identity through defending Ye as unquestionably innocent. From a theoretical perspective, a framed “us versus them” dichotomy suggests that both countries’ coverages were still strongly influenced by the hostile ideologies beyond mere Olympic performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of NBC's 2012 London Summer Olympic broadcast revealed significant differences between athletes of different ethnic backgrounds. Regarding athletic mentions, White athletes were more likely to be mentioned (64.3%) than all other athletes combined, with significant differences found in the reporting of an athlete from differing ethnic backgrounds depending on the venue where the mention is made. Regarding descriptions ascribed to the Olympians, significant differences were found when comparing the commentary for White, Black, Latino, Asian, and Middle Eastern athletes, including differences in the discussion of successes and failures of athletic strength, athletic ability, experience, and intelligence. Implications on the dialogue divergences are offered at the theoretical level, with heuristic impact being discussed in a variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study represents the first attempt to content-analyse on-air commentary surrounding the six ‘major’ Winter Olympic sports, operationalized as any event receiving at least three hours of aggregate prime-time coverage on the NBC broadcast network. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC's prime-time coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games revealed 26 significantly different dialogue trends between male and female athletes. Gendered differences in the attribution of athletic success and failure were found in figure skating, alpine skiing and short-track speed skating, but not in bobsledding, freestyle skiing and snowboarding. Gendered differences in personality/physicality descriptors were found in alpine skiing, bobsled, figure skating, freestyle skiing and snowboarding, but not in short-track speed skating. Overall, figure skating generated the most gendered differences in commentary, while snowboarding and freestyle skiing had the fewest differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study which examines the hidden biases surrounding golfer Annika Sorenstam's play in the 2003 Colonial Golf Tournament. In the study researchers found patterns in which sportscasters and sportswriters frequently allude or explicitly refer to a female athlete's attractiveness, emotionality, femininity and heterosexuality. Researchers in the study compared and contrasted the 1994, 1996 and 1998 Olympic telecasts, finding that broadcasters made more comments about the attractiveness of women than they did about men athletes. The study findings suggest that in the world of sports, men and women have never been portrayed as being athletic equals. According to the researchers, an impressionable boy could become more likely to think he must focus on physical skills to survive, while a young girl could view internal factors as a way to overcome media conveyed inequities in physical strength. The amount of support for women's sports is also an important correlate for understanding the women's athletics.

This article discusses the process of enacting, producing, consuming and organizing sport. Although the actual performance of sport is a physical activity, communication in, around, and about sport influences both the physical performance of athletes and the social construction of the sporting experience. Communication is the vehicle by which community members participate in the enactment, reproduction, consumption, and organizing of sport. These overlapping communicative activities serve to signal membership in or exclusion from the community of sport, to bond members of that community, and to facilitate members' experiences of sport. The community of sport is complex and multilayered. Members are often involved in sport in multiple ways, at various levels, and to varying degrees. Consider for example the parent-coach-fan. Recent work by communication scholars highlights the complex and multiple identities that members of the community of sport enact concurrently and how those roles influence one another and shape the experience of sport for both parents and children.

Analysis of 53 prime-time hours of host and reporter commentary in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics located the degree and type of gender, ethnic, and national biases hidden within the prime-time network telecasts. Not surprisingly, most of the clock time went to men, most of the top 20 most mentioned athletes were men, and most of the athlete mentions and descriptor were devoted to men. Ethnic findings showed that four fifths of all athletes mentioned and the top 20 most mentioned were White. Surprisingly, non-American athletes were mentioned more frequently than American athletes were, but American athletes were characterized as being more composed and courageous whereas non-American athletes were described as succeeding because of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Past research of American Olympic telecasts has suggested that gender, ethnic, and national biases may hide within prime-time network telecasts. Analysis of host and reporter commentary in the 2000 Sydney Olympics confirmed that men athletes, Whites, and Americans continued to be the most-mentioned and most-positively portrayed in the television coverage, yielding more than their fair share of coverage. Analysis of gendered coverage showed that men were characterized as being more athletic and more committed than women athletes, and, in addition, men received over half of all airtime and of all mentions of athletes. Analyses of ethnicity showed that White athletes were portrayed as succeeding because of commitment, whereas Black athletes succeeded because of mate athletic skills. Analyses of nationalism found that the most-mentioned athletes and half of all athletes mentioned were American participants. Such differential treatment has significant implications for the development of American viewers' self-identity, particularly for children and teenagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the final year of the 20th century, television's ESPN network conducted a survey that determined the 100 greatest athletes of the 1900s. Although any list can be critiqued for accuracy and fairness, noticeably absent were women athletes, who constituted just 8% of the list. Because ESPN's list shades the way future generations will characterize the 20th century, criticism of ESPN's list is of importance to sports scholars, historians, sports fans, and the American citizen as a whole. This article lists several possible reasons for the lack of women on the Top-100 list. However, the author ultimately argues that when analyzing history, the shaping of cultural events to fit collective memory often allows the person shaping the event to revert back to biases present in the day the events took place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite claims that the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta were "the Olympics of the Women," analysis of the producing network's on-air discourse showed no significant gains in parity for women. Comparison of over 20,000 mentions of names, sports, and associated descriptors in successive Olympics (1994, 1996, 1998) revealed that the proportions of mentions of women and men athletes and women's and men's sports stayed at approximately the same imbalanced levels from one Olympics to the next. Despite changes from one producing network to another, despite separate analyses of commentary by hosts and venue reporters and of profiles and promotion, despite comparative analysis of adjectival descriptors, results demonstrated a drop in women's overall salience in 1996 and no improvement over time. The results demonstrate conflicts between official network goals and their implementation as well as some of the ways network discourse creates conspicuous frames for media events to meet commercial needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]