A new study has found that the lack of women’s sports coverage outside the Summer Olympics gives audiences the idea that women’s athletics may not matter. The findings by Roxane Coche, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Media Production, Management, and Technology (MPMT) interim department chair and associate professor, and University of North Carolina Professor C.A. Tuggle, B.S. Telecommunication 1978, M.A.M.C. 1992 and Hall of Fame 2023, are featured in “A Quarter Century of NBC’s Prime-Time Summer Olympics: A Sex-Based Analysis of the Network’s Coverage” published in the Journal of Sports Media, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2023.

Coche and Tuggle examined how the Olympics offered female athletes the opportunity to shine on the biggest stage and how media tended to cover women’s sports more and better during those events. Their report is a sex-based quantitative content analysis of NBC’s U.S. prime-time broadcast coverage of the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

According to the authors, “It focuses on two main aspects: (1) coverage of men’s and women’s events and (2) the sex of sources and speakers featured. Results indicate that while NBC’s coverage prominently features female athletes, men’s sports were still overrepresented during the Tokyo 2020 coverage compared to American men’s success in the competition. Women’s coverage became increasingly less diverse over time, focusing mostly on a few major sports, all deemed ‘socially acceptable’ per stereotypical gender norms. Women involved in physical-power or hard body-contact sports are almost never featured in prime time, despite their successes in competition.”

They add, “Male athletes and men’s sports enjoy steady coverage year-round, but for women the Olympic Games are one of the few times for them to shine. [The] framing theory suggests that media content affects not only what audiences are exposed to but also their opinions. As such, the lack of women’s sports coverage outside the Summer Olympics gives audiences the idea that women’s athletics may not matter.”

Posted: February 26, 2024
Category: Alumni News, College News
Tagged as: Charlie Tuttle, MPMT. Olympic Women's Sports, NBC, Roxane Coche