15 Rules of Representation in Media Coverage of Sportswomen:International Trends and Cultural Differences

托尼·布魯斯

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15 Rules of Representation in Media Coverage of Sportswomen:International Trends and Cultural Differences

托尼·布魯斯

The thesis is about the 15 Rules of Media Coverageof Sportswomen. Some Rules appear to be disappearing, others are very persistent and some have only become visible with the rise of social media and internet interactivity. Although there are national differences, many of the Rules are found across North America, Australasia, South Africa the United Kingdom and Western Europe, as well as parts of Asia and Eastern Europe.The thesis is to compare the international trends with results from research on Chinese sports media.

Sportswomen; Rules of Representation in Media Coverage; International Trends

0 Introduction

Theoretically,the research emerges from a cultural studies theoretical understanding that the meanings of femininity or masculinity are always in motion. This means that context makes a difference, whether that is historical time period, national context or culture. At the same time, some beliefs about femininity and masculinity have been around for a long time. They have formed what cultural studies scholars call “powerful, immensely strong … ‘lines of tendential force’” (Hall, 1986). Thus, when particular beliefs have “been inserted into particular cultures in a particular way over a long period of time”, they can be highly resistant to change (Hall, 1986).

In cultural studies, we do not generally make claims about whether texts are accurate or inaccurate, truthful or biased. Instead, we take the theoretical position that media stories teach us how tothinkaboutaspects of identity, such as gender. The impact of media coverage is that it slowly transforms our ideas about what are “the most plausible frameworks” we can use to tell ourselves how the world works, and what constitutes reality (Hall, 1984). Therefore, in cultural studies research, wetry to understand how cultural beliefs reveal themselves in the texts (stories, images, videos) produced by media workers and organisations. When we analyse media texts, we view them as “material traces” (McKee, 2003) of plausible frameworks or lines of tangential force. As Alan McKee (2003) argues,”We can never see, nor recover, the actual practice of sense-making. All we have is the evidence that’s left of that practice - the text”. As a result, our focus is the analysis of “how these texts tell their stories, how they represent the world, and how they make sense of it” (McKee, 2003). But this does not mean that all meanings are equally acceptable. Although we cannot argue there is one single accurate or true story about any event - such as a women’s volleyball Olympic final - there are some generally shared understandings. As McKee puts it, “Ways of making sense of the world aren’t completely arbitrary; they don’t change from moment to moment. They’re not infinite; and they’re not completely individual” (2003). Thus, we seek to find out out “whatarethe reasonable sense-making practices of cultures” (McKee, 2003).

In today’s presentation, my focus is a key form of identity - gender - and the way it is culturally, rather than biologically, constructed and interpreted. We know that in organised sport, particularly in the West, women are often seen as Other, while men are understood to be the norm. When an individual or a group (e.g., female athletes) are seen as ‘them’ we are likely to think about and treat them differently (Hall, 1997). And this way of understanding gender has real impacts: on access, on expectations and, unsurprisingly, on media coverage.

To be understood by their audiences, journalists, photographers, and news editors have to work within the practices that already exist. Media producers have had to “l(fā)earn what are reasonable sense-making practices” in their culture “and think within them” (McKee, 2003). Indeed, their success depends on being able to present information in ways that intersect with the existing frameworks of their readers, listeners or viewers (Desmarais & Bruce, 2008).

1 The Importance of Cultural Context

There is no doubt that the United States dominates research on media representations of sportswomen. As a result, the international research corpus has been strongly influenced by the preoccupations of US researchers, which have focused on genderdifferencesin media coverage rather than gendersimilarities(Bruce, 2015). I recently argued that this focus is an unintended outcome of the early liberal feminist influence on research, which focused on equality with men within existing social structures (Bruce, 2015). Thus, researchers implicitly normalised coverage of men as the desired form of sports media coverage.

The outcome is that cultural differences have not always received the attention they deserve. Indeed, Jinxia Dong (2003) points out that North American and European feminist studies of sport “too often ignore ethnic diversity” and “l(fā)ack local insight on the diversity of sportswomen’s lives in various parts of the globe”. She argues that Chinese women in sport “have rarely been examined satisfactorily by western sports academics”. Similarly, Ping Wu (2010) identifies the importance of paying attention to cultural and national differences, arguing that in China, “the relationship between elite sport and gender is very different from the Western model”. For example, at every Olympics between 1988 and 2004, Chinese sportswomen won more gold medals than Chinese sportsmen (Wu, 2010).

2 15 Rules of Representation in Media Coverage of Sportswomen

In the next section, I discuss the 15 Rules identified in my review of the existing research (see Table 1), while also paying attention to cultural differences. I separate the Rules into several categories. The first includes 13 Rules that have emerged from studies of mainstream news sources, such as television news or newspapers (print or online). The second includes 2 Rules that seem to be emerging primarily in online, non-news, sites. The first 5 Rules appear to be disappearing, 4have persisted across time, 4 are often ignored in research summaries (especially in the US), and 2 appear to be quite recent. I conclude by discussing one area of representation whose meaning is currently contested by feminist scholars.

Table 1 Media Representation Rules for Sportswomen

2.1 Older Rules

The five older Rules- lower broadcast production values, gender marking, infantilization, non-sport focus and comparisons to men’s sport - were identified during the 1980s and 1990s but seem to be less common today.

LOWER BROADCAST PRODUCTION VALUES

This Rule emerges from research that found television companies invested less time and effort into women’s basketball emerged in United States, and identifiedlower quality in almost all areas of production. However, more recent studies found thatlarge differences in production values were disappearing (Duncan, Messner & Cooky, 2000; Hallmark & Armstrong, 1999).

GENDER MARKING

Gender marking constructs men’s sport as normal and women’s sport as Other, by using a gender modifier only for the women’s event. However, this Rule also appears to be less common today (Bruce, 2015; Jones 2012). In some events, where female athletes are dominant such as netball (Tagg, 2008) or become the focus of national attention such as Cathy Freeman in the 2000 Olympics 400m final (Wensing & Bruce, 2003), it is the men’s events that are gender marked.

INFANTILIZATION

Female power and competence is arguably dismissed in the practice of describing adult sportswomen as girls, young ladies or only by their first names, which was common throughout the twentieth century but is less evident in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia today (Jones, 2012; Tanner, 2011). One recent study found that Spanish media still identify female Olympians as girls or young girls (Crolley & Teso, 2007). Although the media practice of calling sportswomen only by their first names has been interpreted as marginalization, it may also be a sign of respect for their sporting skills.

NON-SPORT-RELATED ASPECTS

This Ruleemerged from studies that found a high level of attention to sportswomen’s lives outside sport - such as family, appearance and personal life - rather than to their sporting performances. Although the gender difference in this form of coverage appears to be reducing (Jones, 2012), except in women’s magazines where it is the standard approach (Pirinen, 1997b), echoes of this non-sport focus can still be found (Billings, Halone & Denham, 2002).

COMPARISONS TO MEN’S SPORT

The practice of positively comparing sportswomen to sportsmen (e.g., the female Yao Ming) may be intended to flatter sportswomen, but researchers argue that it is another way that men’s sport is presented as the standard against which women’s sport should be judged (Poniatowski & Hardin, 2012). Researchers are concerned about the one-way nature of these comparisons - sportsmen are seldom positively compared to sportswomen (e.g., the male Ye Li).

2.2 Persistent Rules

We can think of the next four Rules as the ‘default settings’ that reflect taken-for-granted frameworks for making sense of women in sport. Although these Rules are not absolute nor guaranteed to continue forever, they have established themselves as powerful frameworks that have proven difficult to shift, despite extensive critique.

SPORTSWOMEN DON’T MATTER

The most persistent of all the Rules, the overall invisibility of sportswomen in mainstream sports media represents what Gaye Tuchman (1978) calls symbolic annihilation. Cross-cultural research projects consistently reveal that female athletes gain approximately 10 percent of everyday newspaper coverage (Horky & Nieland, 2013; Jorgensen, 2002, 2005; Lumby, Caple & Greenwood, 2014), although their visibility increases during global events such as the Olympics when they compete in the same stadia as men (Bruce et al., 2010). A recent 20-country comparison, that included Asia, Australasia, Europe, Africa and the Americas (Horky & Nieland, 2013) found that female athletes averaged 11% of coverage. Longitudinal U.S. research on televised sport news found that women have averaged about 5% since 1989 (Cooky, Messner & Hextrum, 2013). The existing Chinese research shows a similar trend, although sportswomen receive slightly more coverage and men slightly less. For example, in two studies since 2000, sportswomen ranged from 16% to 21% where men received 48% to 49% of sports newspaper coverage (see Wu, 2010).However, sportswomen sometimes receive coverage that is is similar in amount to men’s, especially during global events, and some world championships. In China, sportswomen received relatively equal overall coverage to sportsmen (35% to 32%) during the 2004 Olympics, athough this was still disproportionately lower than their proportion on the Chinese Olympic team (66%) or their proportion of gold medals (63%) (Wu, 2010). In another example, a Chinese female gold medalist received less than half the coverage of a male who won gold on the same day.Additionally, some individual sportswomen have become highly visible in social media, although this visibility appears related to first becoming known through mainstream sports media (Bruce, 2015: Bruce & Hardin, 2014).

COMPULSORY HETEROSEXUALITY/APPROPRIATE FEMININITY

I have linked these practices into one Rule because they are so interconnected. This Rule constructs femininity and physical strength as incompatible characteristics that need to be managed through re-presentation that emphasizes heterosexual femininity and hides or negatively represents lesbian identities or “the masculine-looking female body” (Pirinen, 1997b; Knoppers & McDonald, 2010). In China, Wu (2009) argues that since the early 1990s, the feminine traits of female athletes are the most common media focus. Evidence of compulsory heterosexuality appears in research that identified how “Chinese newspapers trivialise female athletes’ skill, performance and achievement by emphasising the contributions made by their male coaches and leaders.

SEXUALIZATION

This Rule, also called sexploitation, focuses on the sexual attractiveness or appeal of sportswomen’s bodies not their athletic ability, and prompts researchers to ask whether the media sees their value as athletes or as sex objects (Australian Sports Commission, 2000; Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988; Pirinen, 1997a; von der Lippe, 2002).From the Chinese context, Wu (2010) reports that research on televised sports news in 2006 found that “trivialisation and sexualisation of female athletes…are alsoovert and blatant in China”. She reported that only female divers (whose bodies fit the petite ideal of “traditional Chinese aesthetics”) were portrayed as “beautiful and sexy” and as “objects for the male gaze” (2009).

AMBIVALENCE

When sportswomen do gain media attention, the difficulties for male sports journalists in balancing discourses of femininity and sport reveal themselves in ambivalent coverage (Scott-Chapman, 2012). The coverage simultaneously focuses on physical skill, achievement and strength valued in sport discourses, and on attributes associated with infantilization, sexualization and compulsory femininity. As a result, the female athlete is represented in contradictory ways that continue to place her outside the ‘norms’ of sport.

2.3 Current Rules

The next four Rules focus on similarities in coverage of sportsmen and sportswomen. Becausethe main research focus has been on difference, these Rules have often received less attention and are seldom included in summaries of the main ways that sportswomen are represented. Much of the research that identifies and explores these current Rules comes from outside the United States.

ATHLETES IN ACTION

Studies of sports photographs have consistently reported few gender differences in how sportswomen are represented, although there remains a large gap in the overall number of images as a result of Rule 6,SportswomenDon’tMatter. These results have primarily been reported in studies of international events in which nations compete against each other and in which the overall number of images of men and women are often similar.

SERIOUS ATHLETES

In all media formats, sportswomen are increasingly being “portrayed as legitimate and serious athletes” (McKay & Dallaire, 2009; Bruce et al., 2010; Caple, 2013; Duncan, Messner & Willms, 2005; Kian, Mondello & Vincent, 2009; Markula, 2009b; Wolter, 2015). However, as I argue elsewhere, “it is not discourses of sport that change to accommodate sportswomen. Instead, sportswomen are represented within existing discourses of sport and masculinity in ways that make gender difference disappear” (Bruce, 2015). As a result,SeriousAthletestories represent men and women in similar ways - as determined, courageous, physically competent sportspeople who are striving for success (Bruce, 2009). This Rule is particularly evident in global events such as the Olympics or world championships, except in the United States where compulsory femininity remained obvious in 2004 (Spencer, 2010), perhaps because newspaper space limitations meant the media had to choose between the many successful, medal-winning U.S. sportswomen (Bruce, 2015).

MODEL CITIZENS

This Rule shares some commonalities with theSeriousAthleteRule in that discourses of femininity or sexualization disappear in the face of discourses of nationalism. Researchers outside the United States report that sportswomen who win on the international stage are frequently represented as successful national citizens and, as Chinese scholar Jinxia Dong (2003) describes it, they “have been frequently and uncritically applauded by the media as national heroes and heroines”. Internationally successful Chinese female athletes have received positive media coverage because of their success for the nation, such as Lang Ping, whose 1995 return to China from the U.S. to coach the Chinese women’s volleyball team “became ‘hot’ media news” with “a live television interview … screeened throughout the country” (Dong, 2003). This pattern may have a long history in China, with Yunxiang Gao (2013) arguing that at the 1936 Olympics, “the female Olympians were the pride of China” . Further, Gao argues for “the critical importance of the healthy, vigorous (jianmei) female body to the development of the nation” (2013). Similarly, Wu (2009) found that modern sportswomen such as diver Guo Jingjing are “not only role models but also fashion icons in Chinese society”. The effect of this Rule has been described in numerous ways in different countrieswhich reported the subordination of discourses of femininity to discourses of nationalism. French colleagues found that “journalistic discourse tends to erase gender with its insistence on national success” (Quin, Wipf & Ohl, 2010). I have argued that “in order for female success to be articulated to nationalism, the more common forms of female representation must be set aside in favour of descriptions that are more usually associated with male athletes”.

US AND THEM

However, there is also evidence that coverage differentiates between sportswomen on the basis of national orgin. In several countries - including Turkey, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand - researchers have revealed a pattern where home-nation athletes are represented asModelCitizensandSeriousAthletesbut sportswomen from other nations are sexualized or feminized (Bruce & Scott-Chapman 2010; Koca & Arslan 2010; Iida 2010). South Korea, for example, held up its own sportswomen as “national icons” but sexualized and marginalized some white sportswomen from Western nations (Koh, 2010).

2.4 Emerging Online Rules

Rules 1-13 have been identified primarily from research that focuses on mainstream media sources, such as newspapers, magazines, television news and live television coverage (whether accessed in print form or online). Evidence for the final two emerging Rules comes primarily from research in online spaces, such as websites and social media sites established by individuals and organisations not directly related to traditional media outlets.

OUR VOICES

The rapid changes in the sports mediascape in the wake of Web 2.0 technologies have turned athletes and sports fans into producers rather than solely consumers of media (Antunovic & Hardin, 2012; Hardin, 2011). Although online and social media sport sites continue to be dominated by men, increasing access to the Internet has created spaces for alternative voices on women’s sport to appear and even gain mainstream media attention (Bruce &Hardin, 2014).

PRETTY AND POWERFUL

The final Rule, which could easily be called Strong and Sexy, is one that may encourage us to rethink theSexualizationRule by challenging the dominant Western belief that, in women, physical strength and power are incompatible with ideals of feminine beauty.However, unlikeOurVoices, evidence of this Rule emerges primarily from US-based websites produced by and/or targeted primarily at men. Marie Hardin and I argued last year that “sportswomen who have risen to prominence in social media are often those who embody both sporting competence and cultural norms of female physical attractiveness” (Bruce & Hardin, 2014). Yet, although some researchers are critical of this form of representation, seeing it as another variation ofSexualization(e.g., Daniels, 2012; Kane et al., 2013; Weaving, 2012), I believe it is important to acknowledge the centrality of sporting competence to these sportswomen’s popularity.

ThePrettyandPowerfulRule values both power and beauty (Bruce, 2015). It can partly be explained by third wave feminism, which argues that “it is a feminist statement to proudly claim things that are feminine …YouwereraisedonBarbieandsoccer?That’scool” (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, italics in original; see also Cocca, 2014). In addition, third wave feminism also recognizes the complexity inherent in representation, in which images and texts “can bebothempoweringandoppressive” (Beaver, 2014, p. 16, italics in original; Bruce, 2015; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). Certainly, it has been argued that sportswomen are consciously exploiting the commercial power of their fit and physically strong bodies (Thorpe, 2008; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). A key element here is sportswomen’s embrace of sporting excellence and femininity as complementary, and the resulting images as empowering: Even though the images are often produced by and for men, the women often have choice or complete control over which ones will be used (Evans, 2004; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003; Stoltz, 2013; Thorpe’s former, 2007).

ThePrettyandPowerfulRule is located at a complex intersection of older and newer understandings of female embodiment generally, and sportswomen specifically. However, female athletes (particularly those who are young, white, heterosexual, toned, and match dominant cultural ideals of beauty) are increasingly seen as representing a body ideal (Heywood & Dworkin, 2003).

Some representations could easily be seen as a form of ambivalence, in which sporting expertise takes second place to forms of sexualization. For example, popular U.S. blog site, The Bleacher Report highlighted tennis player Anna Kournikova, stating “she’s hot and that’s enough for our purposes” (Star, 2010). For another sportswoman, the description read: “In addition to being pretty hot and a tremendously gifted athlete, also seems like a pretty cool person who’s involved in a number of good causes. Plus she tweets tons of great pics. Did I mention she is gorgeous? Oh, right, I did.” In these comments, heterosexiness appears more relevant than sporting expertise. However, in other online representations, the complementary nature of strength and sexiness is much more evident. Thus, it is not whether an image contains nudity or overt sexuality that matters, it is the context in which it appears (Bruce, 2015; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). Heywood and Dworkin point out that different images “occupydifferent registers informed by different codes”. Thus, images thatcould beinterpretedby some researchers asSexualizationmay instead communicate “power, self-possession, and beauty, not sexual access” (Heywood and Dworkin, 2003).

From a Chinese perspective, it is difficult to assess whether this Rule currently exists or not. However, Yunxiang Gao’s (2013) discussion of how female athletes in the 1930s were worshipped and admired resonates withsome elements of this Rule. She argues that images of “hard, gleaming” sportswomen’s bodies appeared in women’s magazines and their “performances had an uncanny impact on their audiences. Visions of beautiful young women scantily dressed in sports uniforms dazzled male spectators and impressed female fans” . Thus, the revealing female bodies were not only of importance to men but also to Chinese women who embraced “the arrival of the Modern Girl” (Gao, 2013).

3 Conclusion

In conclusion, I suggest that these 15 Rules are only a starting point. We know that research on media representation of women’s sport reveals both shared international trends and some cultural differences, and that dominant forms of representation appear to be in flux, shifting as new frameworks for makingsense of female embodiment emerge in the 21st century. Online and social media appears to be creating spaces for forms of representation that are seldom found in mainstream media coverage. However, because the Rules presented here are based on a sample of existing research published in English, it is likely that other Rules exist and that the dominance of certain rules (e.g.,ModelCitizenversusSexualization) differs in different cultural contexts. It is also possible that, despite more than 30 years of intensive focus on the sports media, researchers have not seen all there is to see. And so I encourage you to explore further, as we continue to try to understand what constitutes the current or historical “reasonable sense-making practices of cultures” (McKee, 2003).

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(編輯 潘虹燕)

Toni Bruce, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Pesearch interests: Sport media and management, E-mail:t.bruce@auckland.ac.hz

奧克蘭大學(xué)教育與社會學(xué)院，奧克蘭 新西蘭 Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, Auckland New Zealand

2015-10-22 Paper presented at Conference on Sport Communication Research in Big Data Era, Chengdu Sport University, October 22-23, 2015.

女運(yùn)動員在媒體表征中的15條規(guī)則：國際趨勢與文化差異

Toni Bruce

本文研究了女運(yùn)動員在媒體中的表征，總結(jié)出15條規(guī)則，同時研究文化差異在這15條規(guī)則中的體現(xiàn)。在這15條規(guī)則中，有13條是對傳統(tǒng)新聞媒體的研究，如電視新聞或報紙等；有2條是對新媒體的研究，比如網(wǎng)絡(luò)等。同時，這15條規(guī)則中，有5條正在消失，有4條是一直流行至今的，還有4條是最近興盛起來的，最后2條是隨著新媒體的產(chǎn)生流行起來的。這規(guī)則具體如下：(1)舊有的正在消失的五條：媒體對女性運(yùn)動，比如美國的女籃，關(guān)注較少；性別標(biāo)識，男性參與運(yùn)動是正常的，而女性參與運(yùn)動則是修飾，是一種調(diào)和。比如世界杯，男性參與的世界杯稱為世界杯，而女性參與的世界杯稱為女子世界杯；對女性運(yùn)動員的幼稚化描述，對男性運(yùn)動員更尊重他們的體育能力，而對女性運(yùn)動員更在意她們的性別，強(qiáng)調(diào)年輕女選手或者年輕女孩的一面；媒體更多關(guān)注女性運(yùn)動員的私生活而不關(guān)注其運(yùn)動；在運(yùn)動中，把男性作為標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，女性以男性為標(biāo)準(zhǔn)進(jìn)行對比。(2)持續(xù)流行的四條：女性運(yùn)動員不重要；強(qiáng)調(diào)女運(yùn)動員的異性特質(zhì)或者女性氣質(zhì)；強(qiáng)調(diào)女運(yùn)動員身體的性吸引力，比如，更關(guān)注一個女潛水運(yùn)動員的身材而不是運(yùn)動技能；在報道女性運(yùn)動員時，呈現(xiàn)出矛盾。比如性感的畫面配上有關(guān)運(yùn)動技能、運(yùn)動水平的故事。(3)現(xiàn)在流行的四條：體育攝影研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，由于規(guī)則(女運(yùn)動員不重要)的原因，女運(yùn)動員圖像的數(shù)量比例較低，但在國際賽事或事件中，男女運(yùn)動員圖像的整體數(shù)量是相近的；現(xiàn)在媒體常把女運(yùn)動員描述為認(rèn)真嚴(yán)肅的運(yùn)動員，這在奧運(yùn)會、世錦賽等國際賽事中尤為明顯；現(xiàn)在媒體常把為國爭光的女運(yùn)動員描述為模范公民，消除了性別色彩；對本國和別國女運(yùn)動員報道的不同。對本國女運(yùn)動員通常報道其認(rèn)真、模范等特點(diǎn)，而對別國女運(yùn)動員則多描述性感、女性特質(zhì)等。(4)新興的新媒體上的兩條：網(wǎng)絡(luò)社交媒體上，女運(yùn)動員運(yùn)用網(wǎng)絡(luò)社交媒體，但粉絲數(shù)量不及男運(yùn)動員；新媒體上更強(qiáng)調(diào)女運(yùn)動員的力與美的結(jié)合，不單看一副畫面，而是盡可能了解各個方面。她們可以通過展示自己的身體獲得財富，女性的力與美受到了重視。注重塑造賽場上的巾幗英雄與賽后的鄰家女孩形象，但這更多針對年輕的白人女性。

女運(yùn)動員；媒體表征規(guī)則；國際趨勢

G80-056

A

1001-9154(2016)02-0008-07

G80-056 Document code：A Article ID：1001-9154(2016)02-0008-07