Deuce or advantage? : examining gender bias in online coverage of professional tennis through a mixed methodology

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of women’s sports, it has generally been found that female athletes receive less media coverage and are portrayed negatively with myriad gender-specific descriptors. Such biased representations warrant attention as they construct and reinforce traditional gender beliefs. This study compared the representations of female and male tennis players on the official site of the Australian Open 2015 (AO) and ESPN. A total of 357 articles and 333 photographs were analysed using content analysis and Fairclough’s (1992) model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Halliday’s (2004) grammatical resources and Sunderland’s (2004) gendered discourses were also drawn on. The findings showed that gender representations on the two media outlets were quite similar as they both portrayed female players more negatively than male players by focusing on a few areas directly or indirectly: athletic weaknesses, negative skills, mental weaknesses, non-competitive roles (e.g. appearance, attire, family and personal relationship). Relatively speaking, the tournament organizer showed slightly more awareness of the issue of gender bias by using a higher proportion of positive descriptors for females. It was concluded that while stereotypical beliefs about females were largely reinforced in the mediated gender representations on the two websites, hegemonic masculinity was challenged at times. Most notably, family roles and personal relationships of male tennis players were mentioned more often than that of female tennis players on ESPN; and Andy Murray (men’s singles runner-up) was depicted as a frustrated loser on AO. It was argued that these small advances indicate another small step towards achieving gender equality in sports media discourses, but there is still a long way to go.