ABSTRACT

Research question

: The creation of sport media content is guided by the need to cover live, seasonal events, which typically results in the greater coverage of men’s sport than women’s. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, live sport was halted. This paper presents the findings of a study into the media coverage of women in sport during the pandemic. Specifically, the study sought to answer the research question, how has Australian mainstream media covered women in sport during a period of time with no live sport on the global stage?

Research methods

: The study used quantitative content analysis to track the coverage from 20 media outlets using consistent one-directional coding practices, involving a single individual coder at the same time each day to focus on counting articles covering women in sport.

Results and findings

: The findings show a slight reduction in the coverage of women in sport at the start of the COVID-19 crisis in Australia and that low levels of coverage persisted throughout. This indicates that in the absence of live sport, media institutions reflexively revert to traditional ritualized, routinized practices to create sport media content, and women in sport stories are excluded regardless of the presence of play.

Implications

: The major contribution of this study is its demonstration that the ongoing dominance of men’s sport media coverage does not emerge as a result of weekly, seasonal coverage of live sport, but is founded on deeply entrenched notions of commercial value and upheld by newsroom routines and social rituals.

中文翻译：

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（非）公平的竞争环境：COVID-19 期间的体育媒体

摘要

研究问题

：体育媒体内容的创建以覆盖现场的季节性活动为指导，这通常会导致男性运动的报道比女性运动更多。然而，随着 COVID-19 大流行的爆发，现场体育运动停止了。本文介绍了一项关于大流行期间女性参与体育运动的媒体报道的研究结果。具体而言，该研究试图回答研究问题，即在全球舞台上没有现场体育运动的时期，澳大利亚主流媒体如何报道体育运动中的女性？

研究方法

：该研究使用定量内容分析来跟踪来自 20 家媒体的报道，使用一致的单向编码实践，每天在同一时间涉及一个单独的编码器，以专注于统计报道女性参与体育运动的文章。

结果和发现

：调查结果显示，在澳大利亚 COVID-19 危机开始时，女性在体育运动中的覆盖率略有下降，而且覆盖率一直很低。这表明，在没有体育直播的情况下，媒体机构本能地回归到传统的仪式化、常规化的做法来创造体育媒体内容，而无论有没有比赛，体育故事中的女性都被排除在外。

影响

：这项研究的主要贡献在于证明，男性体育媒体报道的持续主导地位并不是每周、季节性体育直播报道的结果，而是建立在根深蒂固的商业价值观念之上，并得到新闻编辑室常规和社会仪式。