Women,men,and five Olympic rings: An examination of Chinese Central Television’s broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

Abstract

This study conducts a content analysis on Chinese Central Television’s broadcasting of figure skating, short track speed skating, and freestyle skiing—the three most popular winter sports in the People’s Republic of China—at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics from the perspective of biological sex. A full examination of 100% (over 37 h) of Chinese Central Television’s broadcast coverage was analyzed in terms of clock-time, name-mentions, and descriptors. In each sport examined, female athletes received less clock-time and fewer name-mentions compared to their male counterparts. However, in the analysis of 7765 descriptors, relatively few significant differences between depictions of male and female athletes were uncovered, potentially explained by the Communist legacy of erasing women’s feminine characteristics and the relatively equal number of male and female commentators in Chinese Central Television’s sports newsrooms. Also, compared to many Western countries, male figure skaters in the People’s Republic of China received more clock-time and name-mentions, possibly attributed to cultural differences in defining ideal masculinity across East Asia and the West.

Keywords

biological sex People’s Republic of China content analysis Olympics sports media winter sports

Introduction

In 2015, Beijing was named as the future host of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Coupled with a successful hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the Chinese city became the first location ever to be host of both iterations of the Olympics. In contrast to its performance as a world superpower at the Summer Olympics, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has not achieved the same heights at the Winter Games. Specifically, the PRC has earned 13 gold medals at the Winter Olympics until now, with the first won at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, a far cry from the PRC’s Summer Olympics performance that currently boasts 224 gold medals, trailing only the USA, Soviet Union, and the UK. Few people would doubt that summer sports and winter sports have claimed different development paths in the Chinese sports context.

Hosting the next Winter Games, the Chinese government has sought to become a leading actor at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, investing considerable resources to do so (Ma, 2018). With this devoted promotion initiated by the party-state, winter sports have enjoyed increasing popularity in the PRC, with the nation offering the message that winter sports are part of the Chinese DNA, inclusive of young and old, male and female. Evidence points toward progress in this regard; for instance, the number of skiers has grown from 6.3 million in 2010 to 17.5 million in 2017 (Song, 2018). The 2018 PyeongChang Olympics—as an important node of the PRC’s winter sports development as well as the first of three consecutive Asia-based Games—received substantial political, media, and public attention in the PRC.

Gendered representations in Chinese sports media deviate from prevalent gender frames uncovered in many Western countries (Dong, 2005). Instead of marginalizing, infantilizing, or trivializing female athletes, Chinese sports media—over time—tend to applaud sportswomen’s physicality and athleticism to depict them as “heroines” and “warriors” with an “iron body” (Brownell, 2005; Xiong, 2015). Advancing Chinese narratives as sportswomen could largely be attributed to the Communist belief of gender sameness under Chinese Socialism between 1949 and 1979 (Dong, 2005; Xiong, 2015). After embracing this economic reform, however, the PRC has gone through dramatic social changes since the 1980s, affecting both its sports system and gender norms (Xu, 2016). Having been systematically developed since the early 1990s, winter sports in the PRC have been growing in a social context with far less Communist influence compared to that of summer sports (Watanabe et al., 2013; Xu and Zhu, 2006), potentially shaping unique gender representation scenarios in Chinese sports media.

Among studies exploring gendered frames in Chinese sports media, the majority have explored how the media represented male and female athletes at the Summer Olympics (e.g. Billings et al., 2011; Xu et al., 2018), with little attention given to the context of winter sports. While Watanabe et al. (2013) examined CCTV’s Olympic broadcast commentary between 1984 and 2008 with gender as one primary focus, the textual analysis did not pinpoint the potential framing differences in coverage of the Winter and Summer iterations of the Games. To fill this gap, the current study analyzed CCTV’s broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics to explore how male and female athletes were portrayed in the context of winter sports.

Three winter Olympic sports with the highest level of medal-winning expectation in the PRC were included in this study’s analysis: figure skating, short track speed skating, and freestyle skiing (Xu, 2017). In the history of the Chinese Winter Olympics, 12 out of the total of 13 gold medals won were in the three selected sports, marking them as the three most popular Winter Olympics sports in the PRC (Shen and Wang, 2018). Thus, the selection of figure skating, short track, and freestyle skiing could be deemed the most widely watched Winter Olympics coverage for examining CCTV’s 2018 PyeongChang Olympic broadcasts.

Related literature

Originally credited to Goffman (1974), framing theory pertains to identified frames as interpretive schemas for information processing. Examining the news production practice, Goffman (1974) asserted that an event could be framed from multiple perspectives with gatekeepers, such as journalists and editors, holding the power to adopt specific frames to construct the mediated event. In this sense, gatekeepers could influence audience understanding and interpretation of news stories by selecting, highlighting, or omitting specific aspects (Entman, 1993).

Rather than simply mirroring reality, framing plays a vitally important role in constructing social reality. Although individuals could interpret a news story from multiple perspectives, systematic framing can maximize the possibility of communicating preferred meanings to the general public (Pan and Kosicki, 1993) by constructing a social reality by attaching meanings to an event to appeal to a desired audience (Eagleman et al., 2011). Repeatedly consuming material filtered through similar frames, individuals might assimilate the constructed social reality and come to perceive the world from a similar perspective (McQuail, 2010).

Mass media have become the primary vehicle for the audience to experience sporting events, far surpassing in-person game attendance (Billings, 2007). Thus, media frames have become particularly salient to the audience for interpreting a sporting event. For instance, men’s sports, over time, have dominated sports media, and women’s sports have only received a small fraction of media coverage (Cooky et al., 2015)—a scenario reinforcing conceptions of sport as a male preserve. Moreover, highlighting women athletes’ family roles—for example, as wives or mothers—could lead the audience to perceive female athletes as second-rate players rather than legitimate athletes (Wensing and Bruce, 2003).

According to Billings et al. (2018a) gendered frames in Olympic broadcasting could be assessed in three dimensions: (a) clock-time devoted to male and female athletes; (b) percentages of male and female athletes among the total name-mentions and the top 10 or 20 most-mentioned athletes; and (c) descriptors applied to depict male and female athletes. Applying framing theory, this study measured the three dimensions in CCTV’s full coverage of short track speed skating, figure skating, and freestyle skiing—the three winter sports with the highest level of medal-winning expectation in the PRC (Shen and Wang, 2018; Xu, 2017)—to explore gendered frames employed in coverage of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Metric number1: clock-time for male and female athletes

Illustrating the lack of women’s sport coverage worldwide, an analysis of two US sports television networks—ESPN and FOX Sports 1— showed that they only devoted one percent of their media coverage to women’s sports, with minimal gains during the Olympic month (Billings and Young, 2015). Meanwhile, in Australia, only 9% of the sports news television coverage was of women’s sports, less than horse racing received (Lumby et al., 2010; Paterson and Matzelle, 2014). Social media coverage is similarly troubling; Hull (2017) examined tweets posted by television sports broadcasters, finding only 5% of the total amount of tweets featured women’s sports. Such underrepresentation of female athletes is criticized worldwide, both for marginalizing women’s sports and promoting male hegemony (Bruce, 2016).

Compared to many Western countries, Chinese sports media were found to render more attention to women’s sports. For instance, Billings et al. (2018b) examined the gendered coverage of Chinese sports websites, finding that commercial-sponsored sports media devoted 10.2% of news stories to female athletic figures, with the percentage in state-owned sports websites rising to 16.8%. In terms of images, state-owned sports websites offered 7.8% of the total number of images to female athletic figures, while the percentage in commercial-sponsored sports websites was 37.0%. However, the authors noted that a majority of the commercial website images featured women as objects of sexual desire.

The Olympic Games represent an anomaly regarding the gendered coverage of sporting events, with female athletes often receiving comparable coverage compared with their male Olympic counterparts (Billings et al., 2014). Researchers primarily attribute this gender equity to the nationalized nature of the Olympics as audiences tend to prioritize the winning of the home country over athletes’ biological sex (Billings et al., 2018a). In the USA, Billings et al. (2018a) tracked gendered frames in the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) primetime coverage of the Olympics between 1996 and 2016, revealing that 45.8%–54.8% of the total spotlight was devoted to women’s sports at the Summer Olympics, and 35.3%–47.7% of the total coverage was rendered to female athletes at the Winter Olympics. Beyond the USA, the Canadian network at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics allotted 39.6% of the total primetime coverage to women’s sports (MacArthur et al., 2017). In Australia at the 2016 Rio Olympics, moreover, the Seven Network devoted 50.2% of the total primetime airtime to female athletes (Xu et al., 2017).

Compared to the rich body of studies pertaining to television coverage of the Olympics in Western countries, only a few studies have been conducted to investigate clock-time devoted to male and female athletes in Chinese networks’ coverage of the Olympics. Xu et al. (2018) examined CCTV’s broadcasting of gymnastics at the 2016 Rio Olympics from a gender lens, suggesting that female athletes received 43.3% of the total coverage, while the percentage that male gymnasts received was 56.7%. The finding that CCTV favored male gymnasts provided a contrast to the media coverage in the USA and Australia, in which the networks usually rendered more attention to female gymnasts (Billings et al., 2018c; Xu et al., 2017), reflecting that gymnastics has been conventionally unpacked as a feminine sport (Hardin and Greer, 2009). The researchers attributed CCTV’s low profile of female gymnasts to Chinese male gymnasts’ outstanding athletic performance in past Olympic Games (Xu et al., 2018).

While CCTV’s Winter Olympics has not yet been analyzed from a gendered perspective, an initial hypothesis is proposed based on prior studies investigating CCTV’s gendered frames of the Summer Games and similar studies exploring the gendered coverage in Western countries. In this sense, a hypothesis pertaining to clock-time is advanced:

H1: In CCTV’s broadcasting of the three sports examined at the 2018 Winter Olympics, male athletes will receive more than 50% of the total clock-time.

Metric number 2: name salience in televised Olympic coverage

Name salience has emerged as another important indicator in measuring the gendered frames in televised Olympic coverage, focusing on the frequency of athletes’ names as mentioned by network-employed broadcasters (Billings et al., 2018a). Name salience can detect tacit messages embedded in Olympic narratives, highlighting athletes of a particular nationality or biological sex. Name-mentions could significantly vary from one sport to another, with some events inherently generating more name-mentions than others (Angelini et al., 2012). For instance, in commenting on short track speed skating, skaters’ names are usually more frequently mentioned because the competition often involves multiple lead changes, and broadcasters need to frequently identify athletes’ positions in the contest while figure skating, however, features fewer name-mentions because of the music component and the singular focus on one performance independent from others (Angelini et al., 2012).

Name salience has been conceptualized in two measures: total name-mentions; and top 10/20 name-mentions (Billings et al., 2018a). Billings et al. (2018a) examined total name-mentions in NBC’s primetime coverage of the Olympics since 1996, uncovering that female athletes received more name-mentions at the Summer Olympics than they did at the Winter Games. Specifically, female athletes received 36.6%–53.3% of the total name-mentions at the Summer Olympics and 36.4%–43.0% of the total name-mentions at the Winter Olympics between 1996 and 2016. Outside the USA, the Canadian network devoted 38.8% of all mentions to female athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics (MacArthur et al., 2017), and the Australia-based Seven Network rendered 43.3% of the total number of name-mentions to female athletes at the 2016 Rio Olympics (Xu et al., 2017).

Regarding the top 10 or 20 most-mentioned athletes, NBC—between 1996 and 2016—featured women 40.0%–60.0% of the time at the Summer Olympics and 20.0%–40.0% of time in the Winter Olympics (Billings et al., 2018a). Beyond the USA, Canada had seven women out of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes (35.0%) at the 2014 Winter Olympics (Angelini et al., 2012), while the Australian network featured six women among the top 20 most-mentioned athletes (30.0%) at the 2016 Summer Games (Xu et al., 2017). Overall, women received fewer name-mentions compared to their male Olympic counterparts, although the sex gap is comparatively smaller compared to all other sports media offerings.

In CCTV’s broadcast of gymnastics at the 2016 Rio Olympics, 43.3% of the total name-mentions was devoted to female gymnasts; in terms of the top 20 most-mentioned gymnasts, seven slots (35.0%) were held by females (Xu et al., 2017). Based on prior studies conducted with CCTV as well as on networks in Western countries, two further hypotheses are formulated:

H2: In CCTV’s broadcast of the three sports examined at the 2018 Winter Olympics, more than 50% of the total name-mentions will be devoted to male athletes.

H3: In CCTV’s broadcast of the three sports examined at the 2018 Winter Olympics, more than 50% of the top 10 most-mentioned athletes will be male athletes.

Metric number 3: gendered descriptions in meditated coverage of the Olympics

In sports communication, a rich body of studies examining gendered frames has focused on narrative analyses, with different media framing strategies uncovering stark deviations in descriptions of male and female athletes (e.g. Ayvazoglu, 2015; Vincent and Crossman, 2012; Wensing and Bruce, 2003). More specifically, sports media tend to: (a) emphasize female athletes’ non-athletic-related aspects, such as their personal relationships (Wolter, 2015); (b) infantilize female athletes as “babies” or “little girls” (Jones, 2012); (c) sexualize female athletes as objects of sexual desire (Ponterotto, 2014); and (d) highlight female athletes’ feminine characteristics to balance their “masculine” athletic performance (Tseng, 2016). Whether in newspapers (Eagleman, 2015), magazines (Cranmer et al., 2014), broadcasts (Billings and Angelini, 2007), or the Internet (Jones, 2012), problematic frames pervade.

In recent years, however, many studies have revealed progress. For instance, Caple (2013) examined portrayals of sportswomen in Australian print media, suggesting that women athletes were treated as serious athletes largely in control of their emotions. In the Australian primetime coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, researchers revealed that women’s athletic skills were frequently highlighted to explain athletic successes (Xu et al., 2017), echoing Lumby et al. (2010) who found that female athletes were framed as both active and ambitious players in Australian sports media. Moreover, the advent of the Internet has granted athletes an opportunity to construct self-images online, with women athletes valuing their athleticism over reinforced stereotypes in self-presentations (Emmons and Mocarski, 2014).

The gendered representation of athletes in Chinese sports media has blazed a different trail compared to that in many Western countries. When the PRC was established in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party promised to build a new country embracing gender equality (Bauer et al., 1992). Chinese women were encouraged to step out of the domestic sphere and actively participate in a variety of social activities, including sports (Dong, 2003). Utilizing sport to advance national interests, the Chinese government prioritized women’s sports because the less established women’s sports worldwide offered Chinese women more chances to succeed in international sporting events compared to Chinese male athletes (Dong, 2011; Xiong, 2015). Since 1952, Chinese women have won more gold medals than their male Olympic counterparts in every Summer Olympic Games, playing a major role in fulfilling the PRC’s ambition of becoming a sports superpower on the global stage (Dong, 2003, 2011).

Owing to Communist beliefs of gender equality and their outstanding athletic ability in boosting international recognition, Chinese female athletes have increasingly been depicted as tenacious fighters with their physicality highlighted over feminine-specific qualities (Chong, 2013). However, the economic reform initiated in 1978 brought dramatic social changes in Chinese society, including in the gendered perception of athletes. Watanabe et al. (2013) examined CCTV’s broadcasts of the Olympic Games between 1984 and 2008, uncovering feminine traits as an emerging theme. Xu et al. (2018) analyzed CCTV’s full coverage of gymnastics at the Rio Olympics, finding that personality and athleticism (e.g. emotion and attractiveness) were particularly emphasized in describing female athletes, although the traditional frame of portraying women as tenacious fighters also was retained. The authors indicated that CCTV’s gendered narrative in depicting male and female athletes might shift toward a more Westernized pattern in the future (Xu et al., 2018). Referring to prior studies conducted examining CCTV’s media frames in broadcasting the Olympic Games, two final hypotheses are advanced to determine such possible shifts:

H4: CCTV broadcasters will attribute athletic successes and failures differently for female athletes than for male athletes.

H5: CCTV broadcasters will describe external factors differently for female athletes than for male athletes.

Method

A total of 7765 descriptors were identified within 37 h, 49 min, and 29 s of CCTV’s Olympic broadcasting of figure skating, short track speed skating, and freestyle skiing. Broadcast coverage was collected from 2018.cctv.com, an official CCTV website designed specifically for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, in which all Olympic competitions aired on CCTV are archived. The videos selected in this study represent the complete broadcast of the three selected sports aired on CCTV at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics (9–25 February). Awards ceremonies were not included in the database. Only descriptive comments spoken by CCTV-employed individuals were analyzed for the name-mentions and descriptors because such content could largely be scripted and supervised by CCTV editors and producers (Billings et al., 2018c). These CCTV employees included color commentators (Liu Qiuhong, Tong Jian, and Zhang Huiqiu) and the play-by-play announcers (Liu Xingyu, Shao Shengyi, Song Jianqiao, and Chen Ying).

Three methods were allotted to the analysis of the coverage. The first type of coding aimed to calculate the amount of time devoted to both male and female athletes. To code this, a single researcher measured and entered the amount of time devoted to each event, such as men’s 500 m in short track, paired figure skating, and ladies’ aerials in freestyle skiing. The second method of coding pertained to CCTV employees’ mentions of athletes’ names. Coders watched these videos, counting each mention of these athletes by any CCTV-employees. The third type of coding was related to athletic descriptors. The unit of analysis was the descriptor (defined as any adjective, adjectival phrase, adverb, or adverbial phrase) spoken by a CCTV employee, and all descriptors were coded for: (a) the biological sex of the athlete (man, woman, or mixed); (b) the nationality of the athlete (Chinese, non-Chinese, or mixed); (c) the biological sex of the announcer (man, woman, or mixed); and (d) the specific word-for-word descriptive phrase.

Then, the descriptors were categorized using the Billings and Eastman (2003) taxonomy, which divides descriptors into three categories: (a) attributions of success/failure (i.e. descriptions of the immediately viewable athletic performance); (b) depictions of personality/physicality (i.e. descriptions of external variables of athletes not directly attributable to the viewed athletic performance); and (c) neutral (i.e. comments that do not describe the athletic performance or depict the personality and/or physicality of the athlete—largely factual play-by-play dialogue).

In all, 16 classification categories were used for the analysis: (a) concentration (e.g. “he was distracted”); (b) strength-based athletic skill (e.g. “doesn’t have enough power”); (c) talent/ability-based athletic skills (e.g. “unbelievable move”); (d) composure (e.g. “his mind is very clear”); (e) commitment (e.g. “never give up”); (f) courage (e.g. “a brave athlete”); (g) experience (e.g. “this is her fourth Olympics”); (h) intelligence (e.g. “very smart choice”); (i) athletic consonance (e.g. “a lucky boy”); (j) outgoing/extroverted (e.g. “talkative”); (k) modest/introverted (e.g. “a deep thinker”); (l) emotional (e.g. “too excited”); (m) attractiveness (e.g. “an elegant young woman”); (n) size/parts of body (e.g. “long legs”); (o) background (e.g. “born in 1997”); and (p) other.

Three researchers were involved in the coding process. Approximately 15% of the database was coded to check reliability. Using Krippendorff’s (2004) formula, intercoder reliabilities were determined to be the following variables: (a) the biological sex of the athlete (α = 1.00); (b) the nationality of the athlete (α = 1.00); (c) the biological sex of the announcer (α = 0.97); (d) the word-for-word descriptor or descriptive phrase (α = 0.96); and (e) the success or failure (α = 0.99). Overall intercoder reliability using Krippendorff’s alpha was 95%.

For the data analysis, Hypothesis 1 was tested by the amount of airtime, while Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3 were tested by the frequencies of name-mentions. As for Hypotheses 4–5, Chi-square analysis was employed to test significant differences between groups by applying the percentage of overall descriptors as expected frequencies. For instance, because 55.33% of all descriptors relating to personality/physicality were about female athletes, it was expected that the same proportion (55.33%) of comments about outgoing/extroverted, modest/introverted, emotional, attractiveness, etc. should be established as expected frequencies for female athletes.

Results

Content analysis of CCTV’s telecast of figure skating, freestyle skiing, and short track speed skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics resulted in 37 h, 49 min, and 29 s of coverage. Hypothesis 1 predicted that male athletes would receive more clock-time than their female counterparts in CCTV’s broadcasting of the three sports examined. Table 1 reports how this televised coverage was divided by biological sex.

Table 1.

Clock-time devoted to men and women in three sports.

	Figure skating	Freestyle skiing	Short track	Total
Men	4:02:26 (25.60%) (54.41%) *	8:19:33 (61.13%)	04:31:30 (53.74%)	16:53:29 (44.66%) (57.32%) *
Women	3:23:07 (21.45%) (45.59%) *	5:17:40 (38.87%)	03:53:45 (46.26%)	12:34:32 (33.25%) (45.59%) *
Paired	8:21:28 (52.95%)	—	—	8:21:28 (22.10%)
Total	15:47:01 (100.00%)	13:37:13 (100.00%)	8:25:15 (100.00%)	37:49:29 (100.00%)

Note: * indicates the percentage excluding the paired events.

As shown in Table 1, 44.66% of the total coverage was devoted to men athletes, 33.25% was rendered to women athletes, while 22.10% was devoted to paired events. Excluding the paired events, male athletes received 57.32% of the total coverage, nearly 15 percentage points more than female athletes (42.68%). Such disproportionality was present for each event analyzed as women received 45.59% of the airtime in figure skating, 46.26% in short track, and 38.87% in freestyle skiing. Hypothesis 1 is supported.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that men athletes would constitute more than 50% of the overall name-mentions. Table 2 reports the overall name-mentions by biological sex.

Table 2.

Total name-mentions by biological sex in three sports.

	Figure skating	Freestyle skiing	Short track	Total
Men	403 (52.96%)	875^a (61.15%)	1415^b (54.76%)	2693^c (56.39%)
Women	358 (47.04%)	556^a (38.85%)	1169^b (45.24%)	2083^c (43.61%)
Total	761 (100.00%)	1431 (100.00%)	2584 (100.00%)	4776 (100.00%)

Notes: ^aχ² (1) = 71.11, df = 1, p < 0.001; ^bχ² (1) = 23.42, df = 1, p < 0.001; ^cχ² (1) = 77.91, df = 1, p < 0.001.

As shown in Table 2, CCTV employees applied 56.39% of the total name-mentions to male athletes and 43.61% to female athletes in covering the three selected sports. The size of disproportionality varied among the three events (figure skating, 52.96 vs. 47.04%; freestyle skiing, 61.15% vs. 38.85%; and short track speed skating, 54.76% vs. 45.24%) always disproportionately highlighting male athletes. Hypothesis 2 is supported.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that more than 50% of the top 10 most-mentioned athletes in CCTV’s televised coverage would be male. Table 3 reports the names of the top 10 most-mentioned athletes during the broadcasting coverage of figure skating, freestyle skiing, and short track speed skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Table 3.

Top 20 most-mentioned athletes by Chinese Central Television.

	Figure skating				Freestyle skiing				Short track
	Name	Sex	Nation	n	Name	Sex	Nation	n	Name	Sex	Nation	n
1	Yan Han	M	People’s Republic of China (PRC)	29	Jia Zongyang	M	PRC	30	Wu Dajing	M	PRC	188
2	Partrick Chan	M	Canada	26	Zhang Kexin	F	PRC	26	Choi Minjeong	F	Korea	114
3	Zhang Hao	M	PRC	25	Maddie Bowman	F	USA	23	Han Tianyu	M	PRC	112
4	Li Xiangning	F	PRC	24	Nico Porteous	M	New Zealand	23	Shaolin Sandor Liu	M	Hungary	111
5	Yu Xiaoyu	F	PRC	22	James Woods	M	UK	22	Arianna Fontana	F	Italy	98
6	Sui Wenjing	F	PRC	19	Alex Ferreira	M	USA	22	Charles Hamelin	M	Canada	92
7	Han Cong	M	PRC	18	Liu Zhongqing	M	PRC	20	Samuel Girard	M	Canada	90
8	Shoma Uno	M	Japan	15	Brita Sigourney	F	USA	20	Qu Chunyu	F	PRC	89
9	Meagan Duhamel	F	Canada	15	Zhang Xin	F	PRC	19	Li Jinyu	F	PRC	80
10	Mirai Nagasu	F	US	14	Mikael Kingsbury	M	Canada	19	Lim Hyojun	M	Korea	75

As outlined in Table 3, in covering figure skating, five out of the 10 (50%) most-mentioned skaters were female (albeit with the top three most-mentioned skaters being men). Meanwhile, within both freestyle skiing and short track speed skating, the majority (60%) of the most-mentioned athletes were men. Hypothesis 3 is largely supported.

Hypothesis 4 predicted that CCTV employees would employ different performance taxonomies when describing the athletic success and failure of men and women athletes. Table 4 highlights the frequencies of descriptors in each category, with significant differences noted.

Table 4.

Descriptive analysis of success and failure by biological sex of athletes.

	Biological sex
	Success		Failure		Ratio of success to failure
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
Concentration	16^a	4^a	5^c	0^c	3.20	—
Athletic strength	17	14	16	6	1.06	2.33
Athletic ability	1538	1125	752	608	2.05	1.85
Composure	26	21	13	8	2.00	2.63
Commitment	69	71	4	1	17.25	71.00
Courage	7	1	0	0	—	—
Experience	307	225	56	51	5.48	4.41
Intelligence	15^b	30^b	0	0	—	—
Consonance	23	18	45	44	0.51	0.41
Total	2018	1509	891	718	2.26	2.10

Notes: ^aχ² (1) = 4.24, df = 1, p < 0.05; ^bχ² (1) = 10.49, df = 1, p < 0.01; ^cχ² (1) = 4.03, df = 1, p < 0.05.

As men and women athletes had a different amount of media coverage in the examined broadcast, expected frequencies were adjusted to be consistent with the proportionality of the overall descriptor database. Given that difference, Table 4 suggests that men were more likely to be depicted as succeeding because of concentration (χ² (1) = 4.24, p < 0.05), while women tended to be more often described as succeeding because of intelligence (χ² (1) = 10.48, p < 0.01). In terms of the descriptors pertaining to athletic failure, CCTV employees were more likely to attribute men athletes’ failure to their lack of concentration (χ² (1) = 4.03, p < 0.05).

In addition, this study further explored the differences in describing the athletic success and failure of men and women athletes in each sport. Table 5 highlights the frequencies of descriptors in the three selected sports, respectively, with significant differences noted.

Table 5.

Descriptive analysis of success and failure by biological sex of athletes in each sport.

	Figure skating				Freestyle skiing				Short track
	Success		Failure		Success		Failure		Success		Failure
	Men (M)	Women (W)	M	W	M	W	M	W	M	W	M	W
Concentration	0	1	3	0	0	0	0	0	16^b	3^b	2	0
Athletic strength	5	3	0	0	4	1	1	0	8	10	15	6
Athletic Ability	178	178	201	131	820	552	448	398	540	395	103	79
Composure	0^a	5^a	5	4	0	1	3	3	26	15	5	1
Commitment	13	9	0	0	14	14	2	1	42	48	2	0
Courage	1	0	0	0	5	1	0	0	1	0	0	0
Experience	53	43	25	19	186	136	19	14	68	46	12	18
Intelligence	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	14^c	30^c	0	0
Consonance	0	2	4	4	5	5	26	27	18	11	15	13
Total	251	241	238	158	1034	710	499	443	733	558	154	117

Notes: ^aχ² (1) = 5.83, df = 1, p < 0.05; ^bχ² (1) = 11.17, df = 1, p < 0.01; ^cχ² (1) = 5.21, df = 1, p < 0.05.

As shown in Table 5, in CCTV’s broadcasting of figure skating, broadcasters were more likely to attribute women’s athletic success to their composure (χ² (1) = 5.83, p < 0.05). In the coverage of short track speed skating, men athletes were more likely to be depicted as succeeding because of their concentration (χ² (1) = 11.17, p < 0.01), while women tended to be described as succeeding because of intelligence (χ² (1) = 5.21, p < 0.05). However, no significant difference was uncovered in descriptors applied to depict men’s and women’s athletic success and failure in freestyle skiing. In sum, the significant differences revealed in Tables 4 and 5 provide moderate support for Hypothesis 4.

Hypothesis 5 predicted that CCTV employees would use different types of personality/physical descriptors when they described the external factors surrounding male and female athletes. Table 6 illustrates the frequencies in each taxonomical category.

Table 6.

Descriptive analysis of personality and physicality descriptors by biological sex of athletes.

	Biological sex
	Men	Women
Outgoing/extroverted	1^a	6^a
Modest/introverted	0	0
Emotional	45	40
Attractiveness	10	10
Size/parts of body	37	27
Background	715	574
Other/neutral	261	206
Total	1069	863

Note: ^aχ² (1) = 4.77, df = 1, p < 0.001.

As outlined in Table 6, one out of seven paired comparisons generated a significant difference. That is, compared to male Olympic athletes, CCTV’s employees were more likely to describe female athletes as outgoing/extroverted than their male counterparts (χ² (1) = 4.77, p < 0.001). Moreover, no significant differences were uncovered when relegating focus to each of the three sports. There is minimal support for Hypothesis 5.

Discussion

This study’s content analysis of CCTV’s full coverage of the three most prominent Winter Olympics sports in the PRC—figure skating, freestyle skiing, and short track speed skating—revealed that men received more clock-time and name-mentions in all three sports, even within figure skating—a conventionally perceived “feminine” sport (Greer and Jones, 2012). This study marks one of the first studies exploring the gendered representation in CCTV’s broadcasting of the Winter Olympics through a quantitative approach, with theoretical and practical implications outlined.

First, the total clock-time devoted to men’s competitions outnumbered that devoted to women’s competitions in each sport, aligning with the prior findings that women’s sports consistently received less media attention than their male counterparts in sports media (e.g. Billings and Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2015). However, although the three selected sports all highlighted male athletes over female athletes, each gap varied. In figure skating and short track, men received about 30 min more of coverage than their female counterparts; in freestyle skiing, however, that gap was over 3 h (8:20 vs. 5:18). Thus, freestyle skiing alone represents three-quarters of the gap. In the PRC, figure skating and short track speed skating are known as the two most popular Winter Olympic sports (Tencent, 2018), and CCTV aired every competition in broadcasting the 2018 Winter Games. Considering that the two sports include equivalent disciplines for men and women, it was not surprising that the gaps regarding clock-time were not substantial. As for freestyle skiing, instead of airing all of the competitions, CCTV selectively broadcasted the event, airing substantially more men’s competitions over women’s. For instance, CCTV broadcasted Men’s Aerials Qualifications, Men’s Ski Cross Semifinals, and Men’s Ski Halfpipe Qualifications, while the counterparts of women’s events were not included. In other words, the selective broadcasting directly led to a salient sex gap in airing freestyle skiing.

The greater amount of clock-time devoted to men’s freestyle skiing competitions might lead people to speculate that Chinese male skiers are more successful than Chinese female skiers at the Winter Olympics. However, this is not the case. Since 1980, Chinese skiers have won 11 medals in freestyle skiing at the Winter Games, four from men’s events and seven from women’s events. At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, six Chinese male skiers and nine Chinese female skiers competed in freestyle skiing, with women winning two medals (i.e. a silver and a bronze) but with men only winning a silver. That is, although Chinese female freestyle skiers, overall, have achieved a higher level of athletic success, CCTV still rendered more than 60% of the total clock-time to men’s competitions. Based on prior studies, the Olympics is known as a sporting event often establishing athletic performance as a more important standard than biological sex in airing the competitions (e.g. Billings et al., 2014). In this study, however, the overrepresentation of men’s freestyle skiing on CCTV seems to suggest that CCTV prioritized biological sex over the more competitive status of the Chinese women.

From the perspective of Goffman’s (1974) framing theory, winter sports—to a large extent—remain at a primitive stage of development in the PRC, and the Winter Olympics appears as one of the most important sporting events for the public to know, understand, and favor a variety of winter sports. Holding the exclusive broadcast rights of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games (IOC Awards, 2014), how CCTV framed the competitions could largely define and redefine these events, exerting an impact on Chinese people’s perception of winter sports. For instance, if CCTV, over time, selectively broadcasts more men’s competitions in freestyle skiing over women’s, Chinese people might perceive freestyle skiing as a “men’s sport,” while being unaware that Chinese female skiers have achieved great athletic success with winning more medals compared to their male counterparts.

Second, pertaining to figure skating, previous studies frequently confirmed that sports media tend to offer more spotlight to athletes in “gender-appropriate” sports over “gender-inappropriate” sports (e.g. Billings et al., 2018a; Coche and Tuggle, 2018). In the current study, however, CCTV devoted more clock-time and more name-mentions to male figure skaters as compared to their female counterparts. Also, the three most-mentioned figure skaters were all male; to wit, Yan Han, a Chinese male figure skater who ranked 23rd in Men’s Singles, was mentioned more frequently than Sui Wenjing, a Chinese female figure skater who won a silver in Pairs Skating. The favoritism toward male athletes in a “feminine” sport echoes the findings uncovered in examining CCTV’s broadcasting of gymnastics at the Rio Olympics, in which Xu et al. (2018) primarily attributed CCTV’s favoritism toward male gymnasts to their more successful record compared to Chinese female gymnasts. However, in figure skating, Chinese female figure skaters have, historically—and again in 2018—achieved a higher level of athletic success than their male counterparts, which could not be explained by a winning-oriented framing strategy in broadcasting the Olympics.

In the Western cultural context, body size and muscularity have been widely operationalized as indications of masculinity (Dworkin and Wachs, 2009). Since the late 1920s, figure skating in the West has been highly feminized with male skaters being stigmatized by participating in a “feminine” sport (Adams, 2010). In the Chinese cultural context, however, intellectual knowledge, refinement, and virtue have played more important roles than physical force, vigorousness, and violence in constructing the mainstream masculinity (Louie, 2012). The ideal of “beautiful man” or “pretty boy”—“a ‘softer’ image than a macho male”—has claimed a substantial impact in East Asian popular culture (Louie, 2012: 932). Competing with sophisticated athletic skills and grace, male figure skaters and gymnasts fall into the ideal of “pretty boy” at least to some extent, which explains why male figure skaters and gymnasts in the PRC are more socially accepted and applauded with receiving more media attention than their counterparts in the West.

Moreover, although male skaters received more clock-time and name-mentions in short track speed skating than their female counterparts, it did not necessarily indicate that CCTV intentionally diminished female skaters in media representation. First, although the Winter Olympics includes four disciplines for male and female athletes respectively, Men’s 5000 Meters Relay takes more time than Women’s 3000 Meters Relay. Second, Wu Dajing, a Chinese male short track skater, won a gold medal in Men’s 500 Meters with breaking the world record, which was the PRC’s only gold medal at the 2018 Winter Games; also, six Chinese male short track skaters won a silver in Men’s 5000 Meters Relay at PyeongChang, which could naturally lead to more name-mentions to men because of the domestic male players’ athletic success. The findings also indicated that the gendered frame is embedded in a larger social context, in which athletic achievement, nationality, and competition system could exert an influence on the gendered coverage in sports media.

Third, although the biological sex gap regarding clock-time is the most salient in freestyle skiing, it is the only sport with no significant difference uncovered in the descriptor analysis, which—to some extent—could be explained by the biological sex of commentators. In broadcasting freestyle skiing, female commentators contributed 56.1% (997) of the total descriptors, while the male commentators contributed 43.9% (781)—the only sport in which female commentators offered more than half of the total descriptors among the three sports analyzed in this study. Based on a plethora of prior studies conducted in the past suggesting that female sports reporters tend to render more coverage to women’s sports and to portray female athletes in a more respectful way (e.g. Kian and Hardin, 2009; LaVoi et al., 2007 Sherwood et al., 2017), the substantial involvement of female commentators in broadcasting freestyle skiing in CCTV’s newsrooms could possibly correlate with a more gender-equal narrative in covering the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Fourth, although three significant differences were revealed in depicting male and female athletes in short track and figure skating, CCTV’s narrative—overall—showed a high level of gender equality, especially compared to the findings found in many Western countries, such as Australia (Xu et al., 2018), Canada (MacArthur et al., 2017), and the USA (Billings et al., 2018a). A trio of reasons were proposed to explain the minimal biological sex differences uncovered in CCTV. First, although female commentators only contributed less than one-quarter of all commentary in short track (i.e. 20.3%) and figure skating (i.e. 16.8%), they participated in broadcasting every competition of the two sports. In this sense, CCTV’s sports newsrooms were not monopolized by male broadcasters, considering that female professionals only contributed less than 6.0% of all name-mentions in NBC’s primetime broadcasting of the Olympics (Billings and Eastman, 2002, 2003) In Wu’s (2009) research exploring media discourse of female athletes in the PRC, she also uncovered a greater gender-balance among Chinese sports journalists compared to that in the West; however, whether the enrollment of female journalists could lead to a more gender-equal frame remained unanswered. The empirical findings revealed in the current study potentially extended Wu’s (2009) research by proposing that the relatively equal number of male and female commentators in CCTV’s broadcasting rooms facilitated a narrative with fewer gender stereotypes in covering the Olympics.

Second, since the PRC was established in 1949, sport has been employed as an important tool to win national glory during the international sporting events (Xiong, 2015). When considering that women’s sports were not as established as men’s sports worldwide, the PRC—for decades—had prioritized women’s sports because Chinese female athletes were more likely to win medals compared to their male counterparts on the global stage (Dong, 2005). In this sense, few people would doubt that Chinese female athletes—“holding up more than half of the sky”—have played a major role in fulfilling the nation’s ambition to become a global sports superpower (Dong, 2011: 161). Chinese sports media—especially during the socialist period—tended to desexualize female athletes and to portray them as “iron women” with their physical capability particularly highlighted (Xiong, 2015). Although researchers contend that defeminization and desexualization of female athletes are embedded in male hegemony rather than genuine gender-equality pursuit (Xiong, 2008, 2015), the minimal sex differences applied in depicting male and female athletes uncovered in the current study might reflect the historical legacy of erasing female athletes’ sexuality and feminine stereotypes in media representation.

Finally, while historical influences persist, these still cannot fully explain why the narrative examined in this study contained far fewer sex differences compared to Xu et al.’s (2018) study examining CCTV’s broadcasting of gymnastics at the Rio Summer Olympics. In this regard, the current status of the Winter Olympics in the PRC could extend explanations. That is, winter sports in the PRC had not been systematically developed until the early 1990s; compared to the Summer Olympics, the PRC has not achieved comparable athletic success in the Winter Games (Xu and Zhu, 2006). With an ambitious strategy to become a leading star at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games (Ma, 2018), the party-state in the PRC issued a ten-year plan in 2016 aimed toward building an entire winter sports industry with an estimated total value topping one trillion Yuan (US$146 billion) by 2025 (Sun, 2017). To advance the PRC’s position at the Winter Games, athletic performances are undoubtedly the most important aspect to highlight. However, the explanation to some extent contradicts the overrepresentation of men’s competitions regarding clock-time, inviting further exploration.

Although the findings of this study shed light on how CCTV covered figure skating, freestyle skiing, and short-track speed skating at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the findings should be viewed with a sense of limitation. First, this study only examined three sports within CCTV’s PyeongChang Olympic coverage, not fully representative of all CCTV’s gendered frames at the Winter Olympics. Future research can examine CCTV’s coverage of other sports to explore the potential differences between CCTV’s narratives in covering advantageous events and disadvantageous events. Second, the study focused exclusively on biological sex independent from other potentially confounding factors such as nationality and race. Future studies could further examine the potential differences in CCTV’s broadcasting of Chinese male athletes, Chinese female athletes, foreign male athletes, and foreign female athletes at the Olympics. Moreover, this study did not incorporate other media—such as newspapers, magazines, and web portals—into the analysis. Future studies could further explore the potential framing differences across multiple media platforms.

Conclusion

Specifically focusing on CCTV’s broadcasting coverage of figure skating, freestyle skiing, and short track speed skating at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics via the lens of biological sex, this study revealed mixed findings regarding gendered representation in Chinese media. On one hand, male athletes received more clock-time and name-mentions than their female Olympic counterparts in each sport, even though Chinese female freestyle skiers performed significantly better than their male counterparts, which provided a counterargument to Dong’s (2003) assertion that the Chinese sports administration prioritized women’s sports over men’s. On the other hand, in CCTV’s broadcasting of the Winter Olympics, female broadcasters contributed a considerable proportion of commentary and minimal sex differences in descriptors were detected. In 2022, the PRC will host its first Winter Olympic Games at Beijing, a game marking the most gender-equal Winter Olympic Games in history (Nichols, 2018). Standing as one of the first studies exclusively exploring gendered frames of winter sports in Chinese media, the current study has established a longitudinal continuity for follow-up studies in the future.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

Qingru Xu is now affiliated with Eastern Washington University, USA

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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