An Examination of Women’s Sports Coverage on the Twitter Accounts of Local Television Sports Broadcasters

Abstract

This study examines the amount of coverage given to women’s sports by local television sports broadcasters on Twitter. A total of 19,649 tweets from 201 local sports broadcasters throughout the United States were examined using content analytic methods during a constructed 2-week period. Results demonstrated that while a majority of the local sports broadcasters did tweet about women’s sports, these tweets represented only about 5% of the overall number of messages. Further examination demonstrates that female sports broadcasters tweeted about women’s sports less frequently than male sports broadcasters did. Additionally, broadcasters in smaller cities were more likely to report about women’s sports than those in larger cities. While results are consistent with previous research on gender representation on nationally televised highlight shows, these findings are significant because they demonstrate that there is a relationship between gender of broadcaster and market size in relation to the number of tweets about women’s sports. Additionally, data are from Twitter, in which there are no time constraints that would seemingly limit the amount of women’s sports that could be mentioned by a sportscaster.

Keywords

gender media sport broadcasting social identity theory

The passing of Title IX legislation in the United States in 1972 ensured equal opportunities for women to participate in sports (Suggs, 2006). Women gravitated to sports on both the college and high school level, signing up for teams in numbers that were previously unimaginable. However, while women have rushed to the playing fields, the sports media has largely stayed away. Decades of research on the subject have found that national media outlets have primarily ignored or marginalized women’s sports when reporting on stories (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013; Cooky, Messner, & Musto, 2015; Eastman & Billings, 2000; Jones, 2013; Kian, Vincent, & Modello, 2008; Lumpkin, 2009; Tuggle, 1997). However, little attention has been shown to the amount of coverage given to women’s sports within local television media. In addition, Twitter has provided sports broadcasters an additional avenue to reach their audience beyond the few minutes provided on a sportscast. The purpose of this study is to continue and extend the research on the frequency of the coverage of women’s sports by examining the Twitter accounts of local sports broadcasters throughout the United States. The aim is to determine whether local sports broadcasters report more on women’s sports when compared to national media members and whether the broadcaster’s gender or market size in which he or she works has an impact on the amount of coverage given to women’s sports.

Review of Literature

The Evolution of Local Sports Broadcasting on Television

For decades, local sports broadcasters were often the only option for viewers to obtain sports highlights and information on television, getting caught up on the entire day’s sports news in just a few minutes. Local sports broadcasters showed highlights of games, interviewed sports personalities, and provided commentary on the action (Ellis, 1992). While local sports broadcasters spent decades as the top source for televised sports information (Quindt, 2004), the emergence of cable television changed how fans received their sports news. In 1979, a startup cable channel known as ESPN (an abbreviation for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) debuted its signature broadcast, SportsCenter, a daily show dedicated to highlights and news from the sports world (Miller & Shales, 2011). SportsCenter gave viewers an alternative to the local sports broadcast, one that showed teams and players from throughout the world, often before the evening local sportscast had begun.

Due to this national competition, the local sports segment has been described as “dying” (Schultz & Sheffer, 2008, p. 192). Once a constant of the evening news, local television sports broadcasters are finding their time in the newscast diminished or eliminated completely. A long-time Nashville sports anchor recalled a time when his sportscast would consume 6 min; it has since been reduced to just 2 min for the day’s sporting news (Likes, 2012). The trend is not an isolated one, either, as 32% of local sports broadcasters reported their time had been decreased, with the average length of a sports segment during the 6:00 p.m. newscast running approximately 3 min (Hardin, 2006). Furthermore, some news directors indicated that there will likely be an even larger decline in the amount of time devoted to sports on the news (Schultz & Sheffer, 2008).

In order to maintain the importance of the sports segment to viewers and compete with national media outlets, many news directors have asked their local sports broadcasters to emphasize the “local” portion of their job title. While national cable stations report on nearly every professional team and most major college programs from around the country, the local sports broadcasters are able to report extensively on high schools and give added attention to the hometown teams. In an effort to combat ESPN’s dominance in national sports coverage, 62% of news directors surveyed said they wanted their sports departments to place more emphasis on local sports and less on national events (Schultz & Sheffer, 2008). One way that local sports broadcasters can implement more local sports coverage is through Twitter.

Integration of Twitter

The duties of the local sports broadcaster continue to change and evolve. No longer do the job requirements involve just working for television, as broadcasters are expected to use Twitter to report news as well. Furthermore, in many cases, online has become the primary reporting vehicle, with reporters saying nearly all stories are first reported on Twitter (Klein, 2013) and that their primary goal during a big story is to get information online and then on television (Adornato, 2014). More than half of all journalists now have a Twitter account, with that percentage rising as the social network becomes a more accepted method of news delivery (Willnat & Weaver, 2014).

More than half (63%) of Twitter users get a portion of their news from the site, a percentage that is higher than other social media alternatives including Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, and Pinterest (Barthel, Shearer, Gottfried, & Mitchell, 2015). A 2012 study found that almost as many people under the age of 30 got their news from social media (33%) as compared to television news (34%; Sonderman, 2012), while nearly half of Twitter users aged 18–34 in 2015 said the social media site was an important way they get news (Barthel et al., 2015). Additionally, 70% of Twitter users said they have seen sports news reported on their feed (Barthel et al., 2015). Sports fans specifically are more likely to go to social media for the latest sports news before logging onto a traditional news website (KT Tape, 2012), demonstrating that social media sites are quickly becoming the primary source of sports information (Werner, 2012). In 2011, just 15% of fans said they consumed sports on social network platforms, but that percentage had more than doubled by 2014 to 35% (Dunne, 2014). The Internet has changed how people get their sports information and waiting until the evening newscast has become less appealing now that Internet websites, including Twitter, allow fans to get the latest sports news immediately and directly delivered to them (Rudd, 2012; Sagan & Leighton, 2010). This has created “connected fans” who use the Internet as one of the primary ways to learn about their favorite team or players (Hull & Lewis, 2014). In order to keep their relevance in the era of fans expecting information as it happens, sports broadcasters now use Twitter to send out news directly and immediately to their followers at any time of the day, not just during the evening broadcasts.

In addition to receiving sports news from Twitter, fans are also able to hear directly from the athletes who use the service (Hambrick, Frederick, & Sanderson, 2015; Hull, 2014a, 2014b) and communicate with other fans about games (Blaszka, Burch, Frederick, Clavio, & Walsh, 2012). Women’s sports have garnered fan conversation on Twitter, as tweets about the 2015 Women’s World Cup soccer tournament were viewed 9 billion times (Filadelfo, 2015), demonstrating that there is a market online for fans who want to talk about women’s sports.

Coverage of Women’s Sports on Sports Highlights Shows

While the methods of receiving sports information have evolved from broadcast television to cable television to online media, the content reported on by the sports media has largely remained the same. Over 25 years of research on the subject of gender representation in the sports media have demonstrated that women’s sports are largely ignored during the highlights of sports broadcasts. A longitudinal study that began in 1990, initially focused on the Los Angeles television market, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament, and U.S. Open tennis tournament, and was one of the first to address the disparity (Duncan, Messner, Williams, & Jenson, 1990). Updated every 5 years through 2015, the researchers also began studying ESPN’s SportsCenter and saw little to no increase in the amount of time devoted to women’s sports. The 2014 examination found that television stations in Los Angeles reported on women’s sports 3.2% of the time, while ESPN devoted only 2% of SportsCenter to women’s sports. In Los Angeles, the 3.2% was higher than the 1.6% that was found in 2009 but still well below the peak of 8.7% in 1999 (Cooky et al., 2015). Meanwhile, ESPN’s coverage of women’s sports has never been higher than 2.5% (Cooky et al., 2015). Further studies found that, despite the emergence of professional sports leagues for women, the amount of coverage given to women’s sports on SportsCenter actually decreased from 1995 to 2002 (Adams & Tuggle, 2004). Additional researchers have compared SportsCenter to other nationally televised sports highlight shows (Billings & Young, 2015; Eastman & Billings, 2000; Tuggle, 1997) and found that ESPN was not alone in its lack of women’s coverage. The scarcity of women’s sports coverage extends beyond televised sports shows, as sports magazines (Lumpkin, 2009), national newspapers (Kian et al., 2008), and online media (Jones, 2013) have all demonstrated a lack of interest in reporting on women’s sports.

Just as the amount of women’s sports coverage remains low, there is also a small percentage of women broadcasting these sports results (Sheffer & Schultz, 2007). The most recent statistics for television news reveal that 92.2% of local sports broadcast anchors are male (Papper, 2008), while 57% of television sports directors said that no women worked in their department (Hardin, 2006). These gender breakdowns in local sports departments are much different than the averages in the newsroom as a whole, where 40.2% are women (Papper, 2008). This divide is not specific to broadcasting, as only 10% of those reporting on sports in newsrooms are female (McCarthy, 2015), with one female sports reporter saying that her hire in the male-dominated sports department gave her “token status” (Hardin & Shain, 2005a, p. 29).

It has been projected that having more women in sports journalism would create an increase in the amount of women’s sports coverage (McGregor & Melville, 1992; Zavian, 1998). However, one researcher went as far as to call that suggestion a “myth” (Bruce, 2013, p. 130). A 2005 study found that female sports editors were more likely to believe that their readers were more interested in women’s sports as compared to male sports editors (Hardin, 2005). However, an examination of sports story selection from various newspapers found that there was no association between the gender of journalist and the amount of coverage given to women’s sports (Pedersen, Whisenant, & Schneider, 2003). Therefore, it is perhaps social media that can provide an outlet for increased coverage of women’s sports (Bruce, 2011). Females (professional journalists or not) have the opportunity to run their own sports blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts devoted to women’s sports (Hardin, 2009). One sports media scholar wrote:

Social media and the Internet, however, have eroded the institutional barriers traditionally blamed for putting women on the sidelines. (….) With new media, then, it could be argued that many of the barriers to fair, equitable and positive attention to women’s sports have come down (Hardin, 2009, p. 5).

Despite these opportunities that women have on social media to increase women’s sports coverage, further examination reveals that they may not have a desire to help with coverage. In 1992, interviews with female sports journalists revealed that covering women’s sports was seen as a hindrance to their career, as it allowed little room for advancement due to the low profile of the events covered (Cramer, 1994). One journalist went as far as to say, “If you want to succeed in sportswriting, you don’t want to cover women’s sports” (Cramer, 1994, p. 169). More than a decade after those interviews took place, the feeling remained, with many women still believing that covering women’s sports was not beneficial for their career (Hardin & Shain, 2005b; Kian, 2007). Despite those perceptions, women are often left to cover women’s events (Miloch, Pedersen, Smucker, & Whisenant, 2005). For example, a study of coverage of the NCAA basketball tournaments found that female journalists were more likely to cover women’s basketball, while the men’s games were reported on almost exclusively by men (Kian & Hardin, 2009).

Social Identity Theory

The idea that men may not feel comfortable reporting on women’s sports is consistent with social identity theory. This concept states that people classify themselves into social categories (such as gender) and associate with groups in which they feel most comfortable (Tajfel & Turner, 1985). These groups provide a social identity that includes a feeling of self-belonging (Tajfel, 1978). A person’s social identification can stem from being part of a group and perceiving the fate of the group as his or her own (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). These groups could be everything from gender (e.g., I am a woman) to being a fan of a sports team (e.g., I am a Giants fan). This group identity has been proven to be very important to individuals (Jenkins, 2014).

Additionally, social identity theory addresses the status differences among groups (Swan & Wyer, 1997). In the world of sports, social identity theory is often used to describe how fans positively identify themselves with the team(s) for which they cheer and then vilify the opposing teams (Brown, Devlin, & Billings, 2013). For example, in 2015, a Chicago Blackhawks fan may have felt as if he or she had a higher status than a Los Angeles Kings fan because the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. A year earlier, those status roles were reversed, as it was the Kings who won the championship. For sports coverage in the media, a status difference can often be seen when comparing sports involving different genders. In the United States, male sports receive more national attention and fan support than women’s sports (Mertens, 2015). Therefore, based on social identity theory, male sportscasters may wish to associate with and focus solely on male sports in their reporting because there is a higher implied status attached. Research on social identity in gender found that men already see themselves as members of a high-status category (Swan & Wyer, 1997).

As stated previously, there are some who believe additional female sports broadcasters would increase the amount of coverage for women’s sports (McGregor & Melville, 1992; Zavian, 1998). Social identity theory supports that line of thinking as previous research has projected that women view other women more favorably than men will (Baiocchi-Wagner & Behm-Morawitz, 2010). This could result in women wanting to discuss women’s sports at a greater rate than men do. However, the world of sports media may prove to be an obstacle to the application of social identity theory among female sports broadcasters. While these broadcasters may want to help increase the amount of women’s sports coverage, the beat hierarchy and lack of career advancement possibilities within a newsroom may make this possibility difficult. Covering women’s sports is seen as a less important assignment (Cramer, 1994; Hardin & Shain, 2005b; Kian, 2007), and thus female sportscasters may see reporting on women’s sports as a detriment to their career.

Previous research has demonstrated that women not helping other women advance within a male-dominated workplace is not new. In the corporate world, several studies found that women in leadership positions will often give preferential treatment to men (Kaiser & Spalding, 2015). Within public relations agencies, Wrigley (2002) quoted an executive who said, “Women are not necessarily good mentors and supporters of women” (p. 40). Among sports information directors at colleges and universities, a job primarily performed by men (Whiteside & Hardin, 2010), it was found that women were more frequently assigned to work with women’s sports. However, despite this opportunity to give more attention to women’s sports, these assignments for the female sports information directors are:

Virtually guaranteeing their inability to climb through the ranks in athletic departments in any kind of critical mass because of their lack of access to high-visibility assignments, which are considered essential for promotion (Hardin, Whiteside, & Ash, 2014, p. 57).

Therefore, the dynamic within male-dominated workplaces creates a scenario in which group and gender social identity may not be as important as professional identity. Instead, women are placed in a situation in which it appears to be a smarter career move not to promote other women (or events involving women), instead maintaining the status quo of the traditional male dominance in their profession in order to succeed themselves. This concept of fragmented identity can create a scenario in which female sports broadcasters must negotiate between their social identity as a female and their professional identity as a journalist (Genovese, 2015; Hardin, Genovese, & Yu, 2009; Hardin & Shain, 2006).

Research Questions

Twitter affords broadcasters the opportunity to avoid the time constraints that are traditionally in place during the evening news sportscast. Instead of being limited to only a few minutes to tell select stories, broadcasters can tweet as often as they want about whatever sports they choose. However, despite Twitter creating the chance to increase the amount of coverage devoted to women’s sports online, previous research implies that it should not be expected that broadcasters will devote an equal amount of tweets to women’s and men’s sports (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2013, 2015; Eastman & Billings, 2000; Jones, 2013; Kian et al., 2008; Lumpkin, 2009; Tuggle, 1997). Therefore, the following research questions were proposed:

Research Question 1: What percentage of local sports broadcasters tweet about sports involving women?

Research Question 2: What percentage of tweets from local sports broadcasters are about sports involving women?

Research Question 3: What sports involving women are represented in the tweets from local sports broadcasters?

The directive from station management to include more local stories in the broadcast could lead to an increase in coverage of women’s sports on the evening newscast. This is especially true in smaller cities as the biggest television markets often have a professional men’s team and do not show high school events due to the large number of schools in that designated market area (DMA). DMA refers to the size of the television market. For example, New York City is market #1 because it is the largest market in the United States. Glendive, Montana, #210, is the smallest market. Previous research on Los Angeles, the second biggest television market in the country, has demonstrated a consistent lack of coverage for women (Cooky et al., 2013). Conversely, smaller television markets have only a few high schools and colleges for the sports departments to cover and no major professional teams. A survey of newspaper sports editors found that those with smaller circulations were significantly more likely to believe that their readers were interested in women’s sports than editors who worked in large circulation newspapers (Hardin, 2005). Therefore, the following research question was proposed:

Research Question 4: Do local sports broadcasters in smaller television markets have a higher percentage of tweets regarding women’s sports than bigger television markets?

Finally, there has been debate over whether increasing the amount of women in sports journalism would lead to more women’s sports coverage (Bruce, 2013; McGregor & Melville, 1992; Zavian, 1998), particularly that coverage on social media (Hardin, 2009). Social identity theory states that women may feel more comfortable discussing other women than men will because they are part of the same group (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1985). However, the previously stated lack of career opportunities linked to primarily covering women’s sports may entice female broadcasters to continue perpetuating the male-dominated coverage on the sports segment. It is worth exploring if female sports broadcasters embrace social identity theory and tweet about women’s sports more often than their male counterparts, or if they focus instead on the more popular and visible men’s sports. Therefore, to test the willingness of current female sports broadcasters to tweet more frequently about women’s sports than men do, the following research question was proposed:

Research Question 5: Do female local sports broadcasters have a higher percentage of tweets regarding women’s sports than male local sports broadcasters?

Method

A random sample of local sports broadcasters was created using the 210 DMAs. Within each DMA, one local sports broadcaster who has a Twitter account was randomly chosen to have his or her tweets followed for the sample. While there are 210 DMAs, 9 markets either did not have a dedicated sportscaster, did not have a sportscaster with a Twitter account, or shared a sportscaster with another market, leaving 201 local sports broadcasters for the sample. Twitter accounts were located either through the local sports broadcaster’s official station website or through an Internet search engine. Table 1 shows the number of sports broadcasters within each demographic group.

Table 1.

Demographics of Local Sports Broadcasters Included in Sample.

Demographics	Total (N = 201)	Percentage
Gender
Male	149	74.1
Female	52	25.9
Designated market area
Markets 1–42	42	20.9
Markets 43–84	42	20.9
Markets 85–126	42	20.9
Markets 127–168	41	20.4
Markets 169–210	34	16.9

The 201 Twitter accounts were followed during October and November 2014. These months were chosen because they are traditionally active times for local sports broadcasters with high school sports, college sports, and national sporting events all taking place.

Two constructed weeks were created: one for October 2014 and another for November 2014. Constructed weeks have been proven to be an effective method for analyzing online news content and are considered more reliable and efficient than simple random sampling or consecutive day sampling (Hester & Dougall, 2007).

Content analytic methods were used to categorize the tweets. This method has been used previously in studies that examined Twitter use among journalists (Sheffer & Schultz, 2010; Weathers et al., 2014) and athletes (Hull, 2014a, 2014b; Pegoraro, 2010) and was deemed appropriate for this research as well. Each tweet was considered the unit of analysis and was placed into one of four categories based on the content of the tweet. The categories, based on previous research regarding women’s sports coverage on television news (Cooky et al., 2015), defined what type of sport was being described in the tweet and included men’s sports, women’s sports, both men’s and women’s sports, and not about sports. A men’s sport was defined as one that only included men (such as high school football), while a women’s sport was defined as one that only included women (such as girls’ high school volleyball). Both men’s and women’s sports were defined as either a sport played simultaneously by men and women together (such as National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing [NASCAR] auto racing) or a tweet that contained both a reference to a men’s only and a women’s only sport. Some tweets from the local sports broadcasters were not about sports (such as tweets about their personal life) and were coded accordingly. The tweets that were coded as women’s sports or both men’s and women’s sports also had the sport recorded. In some cases, multiple sports were mentioned within one tweet. For example, one broadcaster tweeted: “Tonight at 10: 4A & 1A, 2A, 3A Cross Country District Meets, 3A & 1A Volleyball District Championships, plus [name of college] Men’s and Women’s B-Ball.” In this case, cross country, volleyball, and basketball were coded separately within the one tweet.

Two coders (the primary researcher and a trained coder) coded 200 random tweets for initial coding. Upon discussion and resolution of disagreements from those tweets, final reliability was determined by coding 2,073 tweets (10.6% of the sample). Testing this percentage for reliability is consistent with published recommendations (Wimmer & Dominick, 2006) and further exceeds the recommendations of other researchers (Kaid & Wadsworth, 1989). Following initial coding, 10% of the tweets identified by both coders as either female sports or both male and female sports (105 tweets) had the type of sport coded as well. Intercoder reliability using Krippendorff’s α determined a high level of reliability for both the tweet content (α = .873) and type of sport (α = .932). Based on the acceptable level of initial agreement for intercoder reliability, the remaining tweets were coded by the primary researcher. The two coders also coded all 201 local sports broadcasters’ gender and market size and achieved 100% agreement (α = 1) on the entire sample for both variables.

Results

Tweet Frequency

The 201 local sports broadcasters tweeted a total of 19,649 times during the constructed 2 weeks in October and November (M = 97.76, SD = 102.72). The person who sent the most tweets during the time period posted 530 tweets. Two of the local sports broadcasters did tweet during October and November but did not tweet on any of the days that made up the constructed weeks.

Research Questions

Research Question 1 addressed what percentage of local sports broadcasters would tweet about sports involving women. Of the 201 local sports broadcasters in the sample, 124 (61.7%) sent at least one tweet that contained information about a women’s sport. The remaining 77 (38.3%) broadcasters did not send any tweets that were about women’s sports (Table 2). Therefore, the majority of local sports broadcasters did tweet about women’s sports.

Table 2.

Number of Local Sports Broadcasters Tweeting About Women’s Sports.

Broadcaster	Total (N = 201)	Percentage
Tweeted about women’s sports	124	61.7
Did not tweet about women’s sports	77	38.3

Research Question 2 asked what percentage of tweets from local sports broadcasters was about sports involving women. Of the 19,649 total tweets, 15,181 tweets were about men’s sports (77.3%), while only 837 tweets were about women’s sports (4.3%). An additional 198 tweets were either about sports that men and women participated in together or the tweet contained references to both men’s and women’s sports (1%). The remaining 3,433 tweets from the broadcasters were not about sports (17.5%) (Table 3).

Table 3.

Type of Sports Tweeted About by Local Sports Broadcasters.

Sport	Total (N = 19,649)	Percentage
Male sports	15,181	77.3
Not about sports	3,433	17.5
Female sports	837	4.3
Both male and female sports	198	1.0

Research Question 3 asked what sports involving women were represented in the tweets from local sports broadcasters. Within the 1,035 tweets, 33 sports involving women were mentioned a total of 1,041 times (with some tweets containing more than one sport). The most common sport was high school volleyball (385 mentions). The constructed weeks occurred during the heart of high school volleyball season in many DMAs, including the state playoffs as well. College basketball, which was just beginning during the time when tweets were recorded, was mentioned 133 times for the second most frequent total. None of the other sports was mentioned more than 75 times within the tweets. Table 4 contains the breakdown of all the mentions within the women’s sports tweets.

Table 4.

Women’s Sports Tweeted About by Local Sports Broadcasters.

Sport	Total (N = 1,041)	Percentage
High school volleyball	385	37
College basketball	133	12.8
High school soccer	75	7.2
College volleyball	68	6.5
NASCAR	55	5.3
College soccer	54	5.2
High school basketball	30	2.9
College sports news	29	2.8
High school field hockey	28	2.7
High school track/cross country	27	2.6
Road races/triathlons	25	2.4
High school swimming	16	1.5
High school tennis	15	1.4
College softball	15	1.4
Cheerleading	13	1.2
High school sports news	10	1
High school softball	9	0.9
High school golf	8	0.8
College ice hockey	8	0.8
Gymnastics	5	0.5
College track/cross country	5	0.5
Football	5	0.5
Little League baseball	4	0.5
College golf	4	0.4
Boxing	3	0.3
College air rifle	3	0.3
Professional/international soccer	2	0.2
College field hockey	2	0.2
Professional basketball	1	0.1
Horse racing	1	0.1
Roller derby	1	0.1
College swimming	1	0.1
Rugby	1	0.1

Research Question 4 asked if smaller television markets would have a higher percentage of tweets regarding women’s sports than bigger television markets. DMAs 1–42 devoted 49 of their 5,049 tweets to female sports (1%). From there, the percentage of tweets discussing female sports rose as the size of the markets grew smaller. DMAs 43–84 used 3% of their tweets to discuss women’s sports. The increase continued in DMAs 85–126 (3.4%) and DMAs 127–168 (6.4%), before reaching the highest percentage in the smallest markets, DMAs 169–210, with 9.2% of tweets devoted to women’s sports (Table 5). A one-way, between-groups analysis of variance found that there was a statistically significant difference at the p < .05 level in the coverage of women’s sports between the different market sizes: F(4, 19,644) = 22.7, p < 01. A significant difference was also found when the tweets not about sports were removed: F(4, 16, 211) = 60.6, p < 01.

Table 5.

Tweet Content by Designated Market Area (DMA).

Sport	DMA 1–42 (N = 5,049)	DMA 43–84 (N = 3,707)	DMA 85–126 (N = 3,516)	DMA 127–168 (N = 4,408)	DMA 169–210 (N = 2,969)
Male sports	3,937 (78%)	3,002 (81%)	2,824 (80.3%)	3,360 (76.2%)	2,058 (69.3%)
Female sports	49 (1%)	113 (3%)	119 (3.4%)	282 (6.4%)	274 (9.2%)
Male and female sports	42 (0.9%)	27 (0.7%)	38 (1.1%)	71 (1.6%)	20 (0.7%)
Not about sports	1,021 (20.2%)	565 (15.2%)	535 (15.2%)	695 (15.8%)	617 (20.8%)

Research Question 5 asked if female local sports broadcasters would tweet about sports involving women more frequently than male local sports broadcasters. Results demonstrate that it was the male local sports broadcasters who had a higher percentage of tweets about women’s sports. Female local sports broadcasters tweeted 147 times about women’s sports (3.3% of their tweets), while male local sports broadcasters tweeted about women’s sports 699 times (4.6% of their tweets) (Table 6). An independent-samples t-test demonstrated that there was a significant difference in the women’s sports coverage provided by the male and female sports broadcasters, t(19,647) = .10.954, p < .01). However, when tweets not about sports were removed from the sample, there was no longer a significant difference between the coverage provided by male sports broadcasters and female sports broadcasters, t(16,214) = .656, p = .13).

Table 6.

Tweet Content by Gender of Local Sports Broadcaster.

Sport	Male Sports Broadcasters (N = 15,198)	Female Sports Broadcasters (N = 4,451)
Male sports	11,955 (78.7%)	3,215 (72.2%)
Female sports	699 (4.6%)	147 (3.3%)
Both male and female sports	138 (0.9%)	64 (1.4%)
Not about sports	2,406 (15.8%)	1,025 (23%)

Discussion

Perhaps not surprisingly, the results of this study are similar to those of others that have examined the amount of coverage given to women’s sports by mass media. Only a small percentage of the tweets from all 201 local sports broadcasters was devoted solely to women’s sports (4.3%), with the vast majority discussing solely men’s sports (77.3%). Even with the opportunity to use Twitter as a tool to deliver the women’s sports stories and scores that are seemingly ignored on the evening broadcast, the local sports broadcasters chose to focus on men’s sports. Therefore, based on the on-air results of gender examination in previous research (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2015), local sports broadcasters are using Twitter as an extension of their evening sportscast and not taking the opportunity to provide additional information that may not appear on television. Twitter would appear to be an ideal place for local sports broadcasters to report on women’s sports stories and reach an audience of women’s sports fans that may not be served currently. While the local sports broadcasters may believe they do not have time during their evening sportscast to discuss women’s sports, there are no time constraints on Twitter that would keep them from doing so.

Further analysis of what broadcasters are tweeting in relation to men’s and women’s sports also reveals a difference. For women’s sports, nearly 50% (45.9%) of all tweets happened when the broadcasters themselves wrote tweets consisting of sports news or live updates from games, a higher percentage than the 39.3% that were about men’s sports news or live updates from men’s games. This difference can be explained by the fact that men’s sports created more opinionated tweets from the broadcasters. When discussing male sports, the broadcasters were more likely to provide their own opinion or commentary beyond simply giving an impartial result or news item (10.7% of the male sport tweets compared to 1.7% for female sports). Additionally, when interacting with the public on Twitter, 8.8% of those interactions were about men’s sports, while 5.3% were about women’s sports.

While women’s sports information was appearing on the feeds of the local sports broadcasters, it was often another source providing the initial reporting. More than 30% of all women’s sports tweets (30.3%) were retweets from other sources, primarily from team media accounts (13.3%). For men’s sports, only 24% of the tweets were retweets from other sources, including just 5.4% from team media. This demonstrates that while efforts are being made to include women’s sports in the Twitter feeds, it is often not the broadcasters themselves who are doing the initial reporting.

It should be pointed out, however, that when compared to national sports highlight shows, local sports broadcasters do report on women’s sports more often. While devoting 4.3% of their total coverage solely to women’s sports is obviously not a high percentage, it is nearly triple that of previous studies that focused on ESPN and Fox Sports 1 (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2013). This increase can likely be explained by the amount of high school and college options that are available for local sports broadcasters to report on, as those sports are often ignored on the national level. Eight of the top nine most tweeted about women’s sports were all local high school or college sports. The top sport, high school volleyball, would likely never appear on SportsCenter but frequently appeared in the Twitter feeds of the local sports broadcasters. Perhaps the most recognizable female athletes in the United States, the national women’s soccer team (Mertens, 2015), managed just two total tweets, despite playing a World Cup qualifying game during one of the nights of the constructed week.

While the minority of the tweets were about women’s sports, the majority of the local sports broadcasters did send at least one tweet about women’s sports (61.7%). However, a closer look at the tweets reveals that it is only a select few of the broadcasters who are truly making an effort to report on sports involving athletes of both genders. Of those who did tweet about women’s sports, 25 (20%) only sent one tweet regarding women’s sports during the constructed weeks. Four of the broadcasters tweeted 209 total times about women’s sports, meaning that less than 2% of the entire sample made up 25% of all the women’s sports tweets.

Based on previous research (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2015) and the concepts of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1985), it should be no surprise that the male sports broadcasters devoted the majority of their tweets to sports involving men. Social identity theory also projects that female local sports broadcasters would be more willing to discuss women’s sports than males would. That was not the case, however, as it was the male sports broadcasters who had a higher percentage of tweets about women’s sports (4.6–3.3%). Additionally, the four broadcasters who sent 25% of the women’s sports tweets were all male.

In this sample, the female broadcasters’ professional identity has taken precedence over their social identity. With career advancement more likely for both male and female broadcasters who cover the higher profile male sports, it is understandable that both genders would wish to report more frequently on more popular men’s sports. Negotiating between their fragmented identities has resulted in a scenario in which female sports broadcasters have seemingly both their social identity and the women’s sports that they have identified as a hindrance to their career (Cramer, 1994; Hardin & Shain, 2005b), and instead focused on their professional identity. This adds to the literature on females in sports broadcasting, as perhaps the difficulties in obtaining (and keeping) a job in the male-dominated field have left female sports broadcasters with little choice but to conform to the previous norms. Additionally, results demonstrate that social identity theory may not be applicable to women’s actions within a male-dominated workplace.

While previous research has focused on national sports programming, this study focused solely on local sports broadcasters. The examination of differences based on the size of the city reveals that smaller markets were more likely to showcase women’s sports on Twitter. The reporters in smaller markets tweeted more about women’s sports (9.2%) than those in the biggest markets (1%). This demonstrates that the bigger cities are similar to the national sports shows, while the smallest markets are more willing to showcase sports that may not have nationwide appeal. While not outwardly apparent, these results are consistent with management’s request for more local sports that was examined in the previous research (Schultz & Sheffer, 2008). Smaller markets do not have a major professional team on which to report, so they are forced to focus on high school and college sports that would include females. Larger markets (such as Boston) do have many professional teams to focus on in their area, and with the lack of viable professional women’s leagues, men’s sports often remain the focus.

Limitations and Future Research

While 19,649 tweets from 201 local sports broadcasters from throughout the United States were examined, a limitation of this study is that it only addresses one aspect of the local sports broadcaster’s sports coverage. Additional information on the sports broadcasters’ daily content could have been gathered from their evening sportscast or the television station’s website. However, getting copies of each local sports broadcaster’s sportscast would be a difficult task for an individual researcher. Future research may require working with a video news recording service in each DMA that can provide copies of the local sports broadcasts from various television stations.

Examining a different time period may also yield slightly different results. The tweets were collected during high school football season, a sport that, in many parts of the country, dominates the local sports coverage. However, just in the state of North Carolina, for example, high school women’s tennis, volleyball, basketball, cross country running, swimming, and golf all take place during parts of October and November. In addition, the NCAA sanctions women’s sports such as cross country running, field hockey, soccer, basketball, gymnastics, ice hockey, swimming and diving, and indoor track and field during the Fall and Winter Sports seasons. So, while high school football garners much of the attention, local sports broadcasters still had many choices in regard to possible women’s sports coverage during October and November.

Finally, there were a much greater number of overall tweets from the male participants than the females. However, the major reason for the lack of women available for this study was due to the hiring practices of those in management positions at television stations throughout the country. There is a distinct lack of females who are local sports broadcasters (Papper, 2008), so there is little that can be done beyond having a study that focuses exclusively on a specific gender. Future research may wish to survey female broadcasters to determine why they tweet more frequently about sports involving men.

Conclusion

For fans of women’s sports, this study continues the troubling trend of a lack of coverage within the sports media. Perhaps most disappointing is the fact that several factors that could have possibly led to an increase in reporting on women’s sports are instead resulting in the status quo.

First, the traditional obstacles involved with broadcast media are not present on Twitter. For their television sportscast, local sports broadcasters have only a few minutes to deliver the latest sports news. Historically, research has demonstrated that sportscasters overwhelmingly select men’s sports to fill that time, with not even seconds left for the latest women’s news. However, the time constraint is not a concern with Twitter. Local sports broadcasters can send as many tweets as they like, and about whatever sports they like, with few restrictions. Even with the possibilities, men’s sports remain the overwhelming focus.

Additionally, broadcasters are encouraged by management to focus on local sports, and there are a multitude of high school and college women’s sports that can be covered locally. While smaller markets are following this initiative and demonstrating a greater willingness to show women’s sports, the coverage in DMAs 169–210 still amounted to less than 10% of the total tweets.

Finally, female sports broadcasters, based on the concepts of social identity theory, should be more willing to report on women’s sports and showcase the athletic capabilities of those within their gender. Instead, perhaps due to workplace pressures, female sports broadcasters report on women’s sports at a lower percentage than their male counterparts.

While research on ESPN and national media outlets continues to show unsurprising results regarding the amount of coverage devoted to women’s sports, there was hope that social media (Hardin, 2009), management initiatives (Schultz & Sheffer, 2008), and female sports broadcasters (McGregor & Melville, 1992; Zavian, 1998) could result in change. However, it appears as if local sports broadcasters are simply continuing to do what has been done for years: focusing on men’s sports and seemingly ignoring women’s athletics.

Footnotes

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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