High Power Kick

Abstract

The 2015 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women’s World Cup final, won by the United States women’s national team (USWNT), was the most-watched soccer match (men or women) in U.S. history. This quantitative content analysis examined 491 American newspaper front pages published on July 6, 2015, the day after the USWNT win. Results discuss newspapers that placed the story on their front pages (81%) and those that didn’t (19%). The significant coverage of the victory indicates a small step toward improvement of a stereotypical (lack of) media representation for female athletes. However, newspapers that omitted USWNT coverage are remnants of what scholarly literature pointed toward for years: Media put more emphasis on men’s sports, regardless of level of play, than they do on women’s sports.

Keywords

framing gender soccer USWNT content analysis

Research has shown a consistent imbalance in sports coverage in favor of men over women (Kane, 2013) both quantitatively and in the portrayal of the athletes. Media outlets often use traditional gender stereotypes to cover sports, highlighting a male athlete’s masculinity, often represented through his strength, speed, and power, while focusing on a female athlete’s femininity through her agility and flexibility or even by sexualizing her (Boutilier & SanGiovanni, 1983; Cooky, Messner, & Hextrum, 2013; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994). As such, the historical (lack of) representation of women’s sports and the portrayal of female athletes in media suggest that women’s sports are not important. This, framing theory posits, may have a long-lasting effect on society, particularly on girls and women (Coakley, 2014; Hardin, 2009; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994; Kane, LaVoi, & Fink, 2013).

In the United States, representation and pay for female athletes are insignificant for professional sports leagues (Hall & Ogelsby, 2016). However, international sports provide a counternarrative. The 2012 London Olympics (Billings, Angelini, MacArthur, Bissell, & Smith, 2014; Coche & Tuggle, 2016) and the 2014 Sochi Olympics (MacArthur, Angelini, Billings, & Smith, 2016) highlight how female athletes received nearly equitable air time to men’s sports during prime-time broadcasts. The World Cup provides a more significant example specific to team sports, as the United States women’s national team (USWNT) is credited with the rise in soccer’s popularity after winning their second World Cup in 1999 (Christopherson, Janning, & McConnell, 2002)—and their third victory in 2015 created the same effect (Burch, Billings, & Zimmerman, 2017). Despite a New York ticker tape parade and individualized covers on Sports Illustrated, however, the women’s team received only US$2 million from FIFA, which paled in comparison to the men’s champion payout of US$35 million (Hall & Ogelsby, 2016).

As a media event, the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup was a staple of sports news. Indeed, the USWNT victory over Japan in the final produced the largest television audience for any soccer match (men or women) in U.S. television history (Deitsch, 2015). The record number of viewers surpassed the landmark USWNT World Cup win over China in 1999. While television viewers were clearly interested in this match, how did U.S. newspapers portray the 2015 champions the day after the victory? In what capacity (e.g., headline, photo, story, and page placement) was the U.S. women’s team displayed on daily newspapers’ front pages? This article presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of 491 front pages from local, regional, and national newspapers published on July 6, 2015, to examine how this international moment translated in print.

Literature Review

Media Framing

Media has historically played a significant role in public knowledge and understanding of what to think about (Cohen, 1963; Gans, 1979). The process of constructing such knowledge occurs when and how media identify and label seminal events through framing (Goffman, 1974). Framing theory depicts the way in which media includes or excludes certain information for dissemination to an audience and the underlying reasons for doing so (Entman, 1993). Information based on a media agenda is filtered before the content reaches an audience to influence (Dewulf, Gray, Putnam, & Bowen, 2011).

Framing relates to both agenda setting and priming as media effects but differs in process. Agenda setting recognizes bias in media but offers an “agreed-upon definition of news” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, p. 184) surrounding major news events that correlate to what stories and issues are focused upon. Priming provides evaluative benchmarks for an audience (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Framing examines the selection of stories and the salience of coverage to determine what media makes “more noticeable, meaningful, and memorable to audiences” (Entman, 1993, p. 53). Thus, framing offers a way to explore which stories receive media attention and what aspects of those stories are repeated for emphasis.

Gitlin (1980) adds that information excluded has as much importance to a viewer as information included in what is reported. Therefore, an absence of representation gives the perception of a lack of importance. Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) argue that framing helps to reduce complexity of presented issues. Consequences of media framing have been shown to hurt some populations in a sporting context since sports writers influence a large audience in terms of “cultural ideology and public consciousness” (Coakley, 2014, p. 439), given the traditional popularity of a newspaper sports section and its ability to construct interest in news events (Hardin, 2005).

Gender Framing of Female Sports

In the context of women’s sport, media has traditionally marginalized female athletes and presented sport as a male domain focused on skill (Fink, 2015), producing long-term implications for several aspects of society, including the types of sports women pursue as participants, if any (Coakley, 2014; Hardin, 2009; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994). More than 40 years after the implementation of Title IX federal legislation in 1972, which led to a surge in U.S. female sports participation, a gender imbalance in sports media coverage persists (Cooky et al., 2013; Delorme & Testard, 2015; Kian & Clavio, 2011; Wolter, 2013) through banal, embedded media routines (Hardin, 2005).

Historically, research exposed three relevant elements that reinforce masculine hegemony in print media sports stories: reliance on traditional gender stereotypes, the naming of the athletes, and gender marking. First, criticism against sports journalists and their coverage of women’s sports has been aimed at their descriptions of participants through various underlying elements, including increased focus on emotion, family status, and fashion (Baroffio-Bota & Banet-Weiser, 2006; Duncan & Messner, 2000; Messner & Cooky, 2010) that produced an emphasis of aesthetics over athleticism and strength (Jones, Murrell, & Jackson, 1999; Kian & Clavio, 2011).

Second, the naming of athletes has been a divergent point in American media coverage. Female athletes often are referred to by their first names or as “girls,” while male athletes are generally called by their full or last name or as “men.” This infantilizes female athletes (Duncan & Messner, 2000; Halbert & Latimer, 1994) in ways that “both reflects and reinforces gender inequalities” (Messner, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993, p. 132) and frames “girls” as more immature and less independent than adults (Kitto, 1989), which makes “girl” an inappropriate word in this context (Halpert, 1988). However, Bruce (2016) claims this historically mediated norm of infantilization is waning.

Third, a contrast exists between men’s and women’s sports coverage through gender marking. While the men’s World Cup is referred to as the “FIFA World Cup,” the same competition for women is the “FIFA Women’s World Cup.” Marking this event as gender-specific can be perceived as demeaning or degrading to the competition, especially when juxtaposed to the male competition (Duncan & Messner, 2000). Christopherson, Janning, and McConnell (2002) identified a further layer of gender marking exemplified in the newspaper reporting on the 1999 Women’s World Cup which portrayed the competitors as wholesome role models rather than presenting them merely as athletes. As the governing body, FIFA is also complicit in the gender marking of the women’s event in their construction of the event’s name. While international soccer has exploded in U.S. popularity, this gendered differentiation explains a “fragility of those opportunities” (Hong, 2003, p. 268) in the historically rooted male sports domain.

Beyond the pitch, research identified occasions where international events provided positive attributions to female athletes. Cathy Freeman’s performances in the 2000 Sydney Olympics were reported as a symbol of national reconciliation in Australia at the time (Wensing & Bruce, 2003; White, 2013). The 2012 and 2014 Olympics witnessed a near 50/50 split in prime-time television coverage of women’s and men’s sports (Billings et al., 2014; Coche & Tuggle, 2016; MacArthur et al., 2016). The USWNT received more coverage than the men’s team in the 2014 Olympics. However, overall gendered coverage was skewed by an overemphasis on gymnastics and beach volleyball (Billing et al., 2016). New forms of media are identified as creative, nontraditional mass-mediated spaces for positive representation of female athletes, including the FIFA video game (Markovits & Green, 2017) and social media (Bruce, 2016), to possibly shifting discourse away from gendered normative practices.

The Female Athlete Image

Overall, there is ample research on media framing of women’s sports. However, research focusing on sports photography is scarcer despite Sherry, Osborne, and Nicholson’s (2016) assertion that “photographs are an important element of framing” (p. 301). Dixon (2008) explains that looking at visuals as capital is important because photographs affect readers more and faster than text. Previous research identifies a gender gap on several levels including the quantity of photographs, the space covered by those images, prominence through location and position, and types of shot chosen to depict the athlete (Delorme & Testard, 2015; Godoy-Pressland, 2014; Pedersen, 2002; Wolter, 2013). Studies about visuals are consistent with those of written text, as they have found an underrepresentation of women’s sports except during the Olympics (Duncan, 1990; Clavio & Eagleman, 2011; Godoy-Pressland, 2014; Pedersen, 2002). Sexualization of female athletes through media photographs remains a consistent concern (Bernstein, 2002; Boutilier & SanGiovanni, 1983; Cooky et al., 2013; Duncan, 1990; Messner & Cooky, 2010) as such representations are linked to perpetuating the devaluation of female athletes through audience perception (Sherry, Osborne, & Nicholson, 2016). However, Bruce (2016) identifies a pattern of positive photographic focus on female athletic action at least in international competitions that emphasize nationalism.

Findings by Kane, LaVoi, and Fink (2013) show that some women athletes, in building their brands through social media, have accepted, approved and used sexualized images of themselves that can be seen to reinforce gender stereotypes in line with notions of traditional femininity and heterosexuality (LaVoi & Kane, 2011). This provides reassurance that females can be fully engaged in competitive sports but not in ways that are deemed too threatening to conventional gender norms (Boyle, Millington, & Vertinsky, 2006). However, recent studies identify minimally encouraging results for more gender representation. First, Wolter (2013) found that female athletes receive unprecedented visual representation on espnW both in salience and in significance, although the fact that espnW was specifically developed with women in mind may reduce the significance of this result. Keeping in mind espnW was specifically developed with women in mind is a variable that must be accounted for if compared to other studies. Second, Delorme and Testard (2015) analyzed photographic coverage in the only French daily sports newspaper, L’Equipe, during the 2012 London Olympics. Despite an imbalance in quantity of coverage, the framing of female athletes was found to be free of gendered media bias.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

Based on the recent research that identifies a shifting tide of media representation of women’s sports in text and imagery, this study seeks to examine whether American daily newspapers have made similar advancements in the representation of female athletes, namely soccer players, beyond the historically feminine stereotypes found in past research. During a busy sports news cycle on the same day as the USWNT victory, that included a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), Wimbledon, and Major League Baseball’s (MLB) all-star team announcements, what other sports reached and/or trumped the USWNT on American front pages? As such, the authors seek to answer the following research questions.

Research Question 1: How was the coverage of the USWNT represented on American newspaper front pages?

Research Question 2: How was the coverage of non-USWNT sports represented on American newspaper front pages?

Further, the review of literature allows the researchers to raise the following hypotheses as they answer Research Question 1.

Hypothesis 1: The existing coverage will focus on the athletic accomplishment of the USWNT victory more than nonathletic matters.

Hypothesis 2: The gender marker “women” will be used more frequently than “ladies” or “girls” to describe the USWNT.

Hypothesis 3: It is more likely that USWNT players are referred to by their first name or nickname rather than their last name or full name.

Hypothesis 4: Photographs that include USWNT players will emphasize emotion rather than athletes in action.

Method

A content analysis of American daily newspaper front pages was used for this study. As explained below, categories were coded for characteristic patterns (Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 2014) and analyzed to assess the salience of coverage. The newseum.org database was used to collect front pages published across the United States on July 6, 2015, the day after the USWNT defeated Japan in the 2015 Women’s World Cup final.

Overall, 519 front pages were accessible through newseum.org. Six were eliminated because they were foreign language newspapers (Chinese and Spanish) printed in the United States. The remaining 513 English-language front pages were saved in PDF format, including two national newspapers (USA Today and The Wall Street Journal). Due to exact front pages, 22 newspapers were eliminated (e.g., The Beacon-News in Aurora, IL, and The Courier-News in Elgin, IL, have identical layout and design other than the name of the newspaper as part of the Tribune company), so only unique content was included in the analysis, resulting in the inclusion of 491 front pages. If the design was altered beyond the newspaper name, then the front page was coded. Along with the two national newspapers, all 50 states and the District of Columbia are represented in the population.

Coding Procedure

The coding procedure for this study was inspired and informed by the past research discussed in the literature review as well as the authors’ previous professional work in the journalism industry. To more fully explicate representation of the USWNT on American front pages and of other sports stories on the same day, five primary categories were recorded. Specific to the USWNT, four main variables were recorded. First, to examine selection of representation, the absence or presence of a USWNT story was coded with a binary nominal variable.

Second, to examine salience of coverage, the focus of the USWNT stories was coded with four nominal categories: (1) athletic when the story focused on the game of soccer, (2) nonathletic when the story focused on matters not directly related to the game of soccer, (3) local/fans when the story focused on watch parties or fans’ reactions after the USWNT victory, and (4) other if the story did not fit in any category. Only four stories were coded as other (see Results section).

Third, to examine historical gender marking and infantilization of female athletes (Duncan & Messner, 2000; Halbert & Latimer, 1994), if included on the front page, USWNT headlines, subheads, and photo captions were coded with nominal variables. The coding included variables specific to the vocabulary used (no gender marking, women, girls, or ladies). Additionally, if a player was referred to by name, how their name was referenced (full name, last name, first name, or nickname) was coded.

Fourth, both the number of photographs related to the USWNT’s win and its size were coded at the ratio level for shape and type to further explicate selection and salience. Each photograph was analyzed separately. Shape was coded at the nominal level with three categories (rectangle/square, clipped, and other) with the assumption that clipped images necessitate more design work than others that reflects the visual significance of the story to stand out beyond basic newspaper templates (Grayson, 2013). The type of photograph was coded at the nominal level with four categories: (1) action shot describes an athlete was active during game action; (2) sport context, passive when the athletes are walking, on a break, or on the bench; (3) emotions during game or right after when the athletes are celebrating a goal or the final victory without the cup; and (4) picture with cup when the athletes are pictured with the trophy after the game. This last category was divided into four self-explanatory subcategories: team picture with cup, group picture with cup (not whole team), individual picture with cup, and other when the photo did not fit into any other category.

Finally, researchers coded all non-USWNT sports stories published on the analyzed front pages. Three main variables were coded at the nominal level: (1) the gender of the athlete(s) mentioned in those stories was divided into four subcategories (male, female, both, or neither for sports stories that did not differentiate the sex of the athletes involved), (2) the sport covered (baseball, basketball, football, NASCAR, non-USWNT soccer, tennis, golf, or other), and (3) level of play (youth, college, amateur adult, or professional).

Reliability and Data Analysis

Two researchers prepared the coding book and coded all data. A random 10% sample (n = 50) was used for intercoder reliability. The minimum values of Krippendorff’s α were .85 or above across all variables. The intercoder reliability for USWNT variables was .93 or above and included perfect agreement between the researchers for type of picture, vocabulary used to describe the players, and the type of player names. For non-USWNT variables, intercoder reliability was .85 for the level of the sport, .87 for the number of photos used, and .88 for the type of photos published. Data analysis for this study consists of descriptive statistics.

Results

USWNT Media Representation

The first research question examined how the USWNT was represented on American newspaper front pages. More than four in five (n = 396, 81%) American newspaper front pages included some coverage of the USWNT victory over Japan, and nearly three fourths (n = 362, 74%) featured at least one photograph. A total of 414 images of the USWNT appeared on front pages. Some newspapers included multiple photographs: 34 (7%) had two, 6 (2%) had three, and 2 (<1%) had four (Sun Herald in Mississippi and Ventura County Star in California).

More than 90% of the USWNT stories (n = 357) published on American front pages had an athletic focus, meaning that 73% of all front pages included USWNT coverage with an athletic focus and 27% either did not publish USWNT coverage or did not focus on athletics (z = 16.23, p < .001). Of the stories published, 9% (n = 35) focused on how local citizens followed the game, and not a single story had a nonathletic focus that framed the players as something other than athletes. The remaining 1% of stories published comprised four front pages: two had stories focused on both athletics and local citizens, while the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle published a story about Rochester native Abby Wambach and the Chattanooga Times Free Press wrote about the city’s wish to host the USWNT in a future non-World Cup match. Therefore, Hypothesis 1, which predicted that existing coverage would focus on the athletic accomplishment of the USWNT victory more than nonathletic matters, is supported.

Almost two thirds of USWNT stories did not specifically mark the team or players based on gender in their headlines and/or subheads (n = 606, 61%). The difference with those who did is significant according to a z test for proportions (z = 7.91, p < .001). Of the stories that did use gender marking, the term “women” (n = 226, 37%) was used overwhelmingly more than the terms “ladies” or “girls” (1% or less each; p < .001 using z tests for proportions on each). As such, Hypothesis 2 (gender marker “women” will be used more frequently than “ladies” or “girls” to describe the USWNT) is overwhelmingly supported.

Hypothesis 3 anticipated that USWNT players would be referred to by their first name or nickname rather than their last name or full name. It was not supported: of the 166 times USWNT players were identified in headlines, subheads, and captions, their full names were the most used (n = 80, 48%), followed by their last name (n = 70, 42%). The difference between the two is not significant (z = 1.10, p = ns). Both were significantly more likely to be used than first names (n = 16, 10% of total references; p < .001 using z tests for proportions on each), and nicknames were never used.

As previously mentioned, the 491 front pages analyzed for this study included 415 photographs related to the USWNT victory. Of those, 350 photos featured at least one player—the 65 others were either of objects (e.g., stadium, trophy) or fans. Only six photographs (2% of the 250 featuring at least one athlete) show athletes in action and four (1%) show them being passive on the field. In contrast, 246 (70%) are pictures depicting emotions. Most of those are positive emotional images of American players after a goal or at the end of the game, but a few feature the Japanese players’ sadness instead. The remaining 94 photographs featuring at least one athlete (24%) depicted a player, a group of players, or the whole team with the World Cup trophy. Consequently, Hypothesis 4, which forecast that photographs including USWNT players would emphasize emotion rather than athletes in action, is supported.

The average front-page space utilized for a photograph on the front page was 20.3 sq. in. (not accounting for any accompanying text), which covers approximately 11% of a tabloid-size paper. Overall, three tabloid-size papers from different states (Express in DC, Newsday in New York, and Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania) used at least 80% of its front page for a USWNT picture with text embedded within the image. Further, 15% of those pictures (n = 62) were clipped, which identifies a design emphasis to highlight the significant value of the USWNT story. Overall, the data for the first research question show that the USWNT World Cup victory was framed as a significant news story on front pages of American newspapers.

Non-USWNT Sports Media Representation

The second research question examined how non-USWNT sports stories were represented on American newspaper front pages. Of the 491 front pages analyzed, more than two in five (n = 210, 43%) American newspapers included at least one non-USWNT sports story on the front page. A total of 250 non-USWNT stories appeared on front pages, including 38 newspapers (8% of total population) that had two stories and one (the Dominion Post in Morgantown, WV) that had three.

Nearly three fourths (n = 185, 74%) of non-USWNT sports stories were about men’s sports, while only 10% (n = 26) were about women’s sports other than the USWNT, a difference that is significant (z = 18.8, p < .001). Another 18 stories (7%) include both male and female athletes and 21 (8%) are gender-neutral, such as sports-themed stories about the display of confederate flags at NASCAR events. Women’s sports stories were not more likely to appear than either of these two categories (z = 1.27, p = ns for stories coded as “both” and z = 0.77, p = ns for gender-neutral stories; Table 1).

Table 1.

Gender Differences in the Amount of Non-United States Women’s National Team Front-Page Sports Stories by Level of Play.

Level of Play	Male	Female	Both	Neutral	Total
Youth	27***	10***	5	5	47
College	8***	1***	0	0	9
Amateur adult	13**	3**	8	10	34
Pro sports	137***	12***	5	6	160
Total	185***	26***	18	21	250

Note. z tests for proportions were used to determine whether the difference between men and women was significant.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

A closer examination of non-USWNT stories identified 137 (55%) that were about professional men’s sports, including 118 (47% of non-USWNT sports stories and 86% of male sports stories) about baseball, which is not surprising since MLB all-star rosters were announced the same day as the USWNT World Cup final. Other men’s sports featured include NASCAR, golf, and even rodeo. Overall, stories about male youth sports (n = 27, 11%) outnumbered stories about non-USWNT female sports across all levels (youth, college, amateur adult, and professional sports, n = 26, 10%). Only 12 non-USWNT sports stories (six golf, six tennis) highlighted women’s professional sports.

Surprisingly, of the 95 American newspapers that did not include any mention of the USWNT victory, more than half (n = 50, 53%) included at least one non-USWNT sports story, including 8 newspapers that had two, for a total of 58 stories. Of those 58 stories, 43 (74%) focused on male sports, while only 6 (10%) focused on female sports, a significant difference (z = 9.11, p < .001). The rest were either gender-neutral stories (n = 7, 12%) or stories that included both male and female sports (n = 2, 3%). Parallel with the overall sample, in cases of newspaper front pages that omitted a USWNT story, male youth sports stories (n = 11) outnumbered female sports stories at all levels (n = 6; Table 2).

Table 2.

Gender Differences in the Amount of Front-Page Sports Stories Published by Newspapers With Non-United States Women’s National Team Coverage by Level of Play.

Level of Play	Male	Female	Both	Neutral	Total
Youth	11**	4**	1	0	16
College	2	0	0	0	2
Amateur adult	3	0	6	1	10
Professional	27***	2***	0	1	30
Total	43***	6***	7	2	58

Note. z tests for proportions were used to determine whether the difference between men and women was significant in the youth and professional sports categories as well as overall. (Because no female sports stories were published in the college and amateur adult categories, calculating z in those is impossible.)

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Discussion

This study quantitatively examined the coverage of the USWNT’s win over Japan in the 2015 World Cup final and how the victory translated onto the front pages of American newspapers the day after the game. The results identify that the victory received significant coverage and indicate a small step toward improvement of media representation of female sports in the United States. Additionally, results provide a snapshot of decreased gender marking and infantilization.

USWNT coverage (81%) more than doubled all male sports stories combined (38%), which eases Hardin’s (2005) historically grounded analysis that media representation of women’s sports is banal, at least for this championship moment. Specific to framing theory, the selection and salience for media representation of the USWNT on American front pages is significant both in volume and in quality. The fact that 395 newspapers included the USWNT victory on the front page exemplifies the selection of the World Cup victory as a major news event. In fact, USWNT stories received far more coverage (n = 396) than any other sport on the 491 American front pages analyzed (the next sport is male baseball with 118 stories across all levels). Regarding salience, the quality of representation is evident in the amount of front-page space allocated to the story in content as well as number and size of photographs, which is a prominent form of media framing of sports (Hall & Ogelsby, 2016). This research also supports recent studies that indicate increased representation of women’s sports in international competition (Billings et al., 2014; Coche & Tuggle, 2016; MacArthur et al., 2016) and provides a solid example beyond the Olympics.

Within the content included in this study, the findings compared to the hypotheses provide evidence of substantial improvement in representation of female sports, especially nongendered reporting of the USWNT. Historically, if women’s sports received media coverage, it was often either sexualized or trivialized. However, the USWNT coverage focused almost exclusively on the athletic accomplishment of winning the World Cup and that achievement was not diminished based on it being the success of female athletes. Therefore, reaching the front page was framed based on the merit on the field as indicated in more than 90% of stories.

Gender marking (women, ladies, and girls) was excluded in more than 75% of headlines, subheads, and captions. Of the articles that did use gender marking, “women” was the overwhelming signifier. Although these findings still show that one of every four mentions provided a gendered identity rather than focusing solely on the athlete, the type of gender indicator is not one of immaturity (e.g., “girl”). Additionally, more than 90% (n = 160) of text identifying athletes by name did so by either last name or full name. This suggests greater credibility for the athletes in the overall coverage. These findings indicate a shift away from infantilization uncovered in previous research (Duncan & Messner, 2000; Halbert & Latimer, 1994) and supports Bruce’s (2016) contention that older forms of framing the sporting achievements of women and girls may be fading as their abilities are recognized and celebrated. While eliminating gender marking and infantilization should be a media goal, this research provides a onetime sample that progress is present in representation of female athletes.

Photographs related to the USWNT victory covered 11% of the overall space on the 395 front pages in which they appeared. This is significant when considering how many newsworthy moments occur every day and is a solid visual proportion of content available. It also positively indicates the mediated influence and reach that women’s sports can have because photos affect readers more and faster than text does (Dixon, 2008), thus making them “an important element of framing” (Sherry et al., 2016, p. 301). At first consideration, the fact that more than 70% of the images of the USWNT displayed emotion over athleticism could reinforce a pre-existing form of gendered photographic representation that frames men as active participants and women as reactive objects (Bernstein, 2002; Duncan & Messner, 2000). However, when considering that the USWNT accomplishment represented the culmination of winning a monthlong tournament and did so in dominating fashion (winning by three goals), by three goals, further interpretation provides a secondary rationale that photographs of players expressing emotion with a trophy or in celebration with teammates may be consistent with winning other major championships (e.g., Super Bowl, Stanley Cup).

This study provides positive indicators of how media framed the USWNT victory for its athletic achievement, regardless of gender, and assumes the story graced the cover of all sports sections. However, one concern is that nearly 20% of American newspapers (n = 95) did not consider the USWNT victory as a major news event worthy of front-page recognition despite a record-breaking television audience. Whether influenced by editorial decisions or newspaper printing deadlines, the omission of USWNT coverage is more concerning when considering that more than half of the newspapers that did not represent the USWNT on the front page included some other sports story.

Male sports stories on the same day as the USWNT victory included the announcement of the MLB all-star rosters and the summer NASCAR race in Daytona, which typically are significant stories both nationally (MLB) and regionally (NASCAR in the south). Even though the USWNT coverage outpaced men’s sports in overall representation on American front pages, 50 newspapers that omitted the USWNT included coverage of other sports. A closer examination of these 50 front pages shows the great majority featured only men’s sports stories, and only six women’s sports stories, five of which were based locally (three about junior softball leagues, one about a high school track and field meet, and one about a local Symetra Tour golf tournament). The last women’s sports story previews the upcoming Wimbledon quarterfinal match between the Williams sisters. Meanwhile, the 52 other sports stories on these 50 front pages (43 male and 9 gender-neutral) were an eclectic mix of professional (e.g., MLB, NASCAR, PGA TOUR, National Hockey League, rodeo), high-level youth (e.g., college or little league baseball, high school track and field), and amateur adult sports (e.g., fishing). These newspapers’ front page choices are remnants of what scholarly literature pointed toward for years: Media put more emphasis on men’s sports, regardless of level of play, than they do on women’s sports (Kian & Clavio, 2011).

Limitations and Future Directions

A few limitations exist in this study. The content regarding the USWNT media representation was limited to American front pages only the day after the World Cup victory and did not expand beyond headline, subheads, captions, and photographs because limited portions of the newspapers included in this study were available when the data were collected. Further content analysis of the articles included or referred to on the front page could glean more insight into media framing, how the USWNT was represented, and if the athletic tone indicated in the headlines was reflected in the story. In addition to the textual representation, further analysis of coverage within sports sections could provide greater depth of USWNT representation and a more holistic idea of how significant the team’s victory was in the overall American media landscape. Another limitation of the study is that it provides a snapshot of media representation limited to the 2015 World Cup final. Further research could explore if and how the USWNT was covered on front pages throughout the entire tournament. This analysis could provide context to agenda setting and priming in the lead-up to the final and synthesize if media representation of female athletes is increasing across the media landscape or limited to winning championships.

Future directions for research include a comparison of the 2015 USWNT coverage with that of the 1999 World Cup–winning team or against how the USWNT is covered during the Olympics. This could provide unique insight into the selection and salience of coverage provided to the national team both historically in the World Cup and/or comparison between an event solely focused on soccer versus an Olympic event competing with dozens of sports for media attention. Additionally, research specifically examining who is visually represented in USWNT media coverage could further explicate gender marking and infantilization, including portrayals of heterosexual players versus the players who are openly lesbian. This would provide a further layer of analysis, in a new context, of the historically gendered and sexualized coverage of women’s sport.

Conclusion

This current research indicates that the USWNT can result in heightened media attention for women’s team sports amplified by the every 4 years news cycle provided by international events such as the World Cup and the Olympics. However, it is in the daily coverage where media must begin to focus more attention on women’s sport, especially team sports, to provide a more realistic portrayal of female athletic accomplishments within the larger sports context (Bernstein, 2002). Greater representation, both in textual and in visual content, can inspire younger female athletes to pursue sports participation as an athletic endeavor beyond the traditionally depicted sexualization (Sherry et al., 2016).

The success of women’s soccer as contrasted to men’s soccer in the United States indicates potential but is also an example of American exceptionalism and nationalism (Markovits & Hellerman, 2003) that must move beyond increased media representation and celebration limited to international competition. For women’s soccer to truly flourish in the United States, media must show a long-range consistent interest in coverage of women’s professional soccer leagues rather than coverage that continues briefly following a World Cup cycle only to dissolve within a few years (Barrabi, 2015; Mitchell, 2016). Additionally, these leagues must navigate the access, limitations, and possibilities new media technologies provide to promote and grow a league through nontraditional platforms (Dart, 2014), moving well beyond dependence on traditional coverage on the front page of newspapers.

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.

References

Barrabi

(2015, 8 21). National Women’s Soccer League faces post-World Cup obstacles: Shy sponsors, hotel bedbugs. International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/national-womens-soccer-league-faces-post-world-cup-obstacles-shy-sponsors-hotel-2062736

Baroffio-Bota

Banet-Weiser

(2006). Women, team sports, and the WNBA: Playing like a girl. In Raney

A. A.

Bryant

(Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 485–500). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bernstein

(2002). Is it time for a victory lap? Changes in the media coverage of women in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37, 415–428.

Billings

A. C.

Angelini

J. R.

MacArthur

P. J.

Bissell

Smith

L. R.

(2014). (Re)calling London: The gender frame agenda within NBC’s primetime broadcast of the 2012 Olympiad. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91, 38–58.

Boutilier

M. A.

SanGiovanni

(1983). The sporting woman. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Boyle

Millington

Vertinsky

(2006). Representing the female pugilist: Narratives of race, gender, and disability in Million Dollar Boby. Sociology of Sport Journal, 23(2), 99–116.

Bruce

(2016). New rules for new times: Sportswomen and media representation in the third wave. Sex Roles, 74, 361–376.

Burch

L. M.

Billings

A. C.

Zimmerman

M. H

. (2017). Comparing American soccer dialogues: Social media commentary surrounding the 2014 US men’s and 2015 US women’s World Cup teams. Sport in Society. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/17430437.2017.1284811

Christopherson

Janning

McConnell

E. D.

(2002). Two kicks forward, one kick back: A content analysis of media discourses on the 1999 Women’s World Cup soccer championship. Sociology of Sport Journal, 19, 170–188.

10.

Clavio

Eagleman

A. N.

(2011). Gender and sexually suggestive images in sports blogs. Journal of Sport Management, 7, 295–304.

11.

Coakley

J. J.

(2014). Sports in society: Issues and controversies (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

12.

Coche

Tuggle

C. A.

(2016). The women’s Olympics? A gender analysis of NBC’s coverage of the 2012 London Summer Games. Electronic News, 10, 121–138.

13.

Cohen

B. C.

(1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

14.

Cooky

Messner

M. A.

Hextrum

R. H.

(2013). Women play sports, but not on TV: A longitudinal study of televised news media. Communication & Sport, 1, 203–230.

15.

Dart

(2014). New media, professional sport and political economy. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 38, 528–547.

16.

Deitsch

(2015, 7 6). USA–Japan Women’s World Cup final shatters American TV ratings record. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2015/07/06/usa-japan-womens-world-cup-tv-ratings-record

17.

Delorme

Testard

(2015). Sex equity in French newspaper photographs: A content analysis of 2012 Olympic Games by L’Equipe. European Journal of Sport Science, 15, 757–763.

18.

Dewulf

Gray

Putnam

Bouwen

(2011). An interactional approach to framing in conflict and negotiation. In Donohue

W. A.

Rogan

R. G.

Kaufman

(Eds.), Framing matters (pp. 7–33). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

19.

Dixon

(2008). Who took that photo? A content analysis of front page online newspaper photographs (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Nevada, Reno.

20.

Duncan

M. C.

(1990). Sports photographs and sexual differences: Images of women and men in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 22–43.

21.

Duncan

M. C.

Messner

M. A.

(2000). Gender in televised sports: 1989, 1993 and 1999. Los Angeles, CA: Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. Retrieved from http://www.la84foundation.org/9arr/ResearchReports/tv2000.pdf

22.

Entman

(1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51–58.

23.

Fink

J. S.

(2015). Female athletes, women’s sport, and the sport media commercial complex: Have we really “come a long way, baby”? Sport Management Review, 18, 331–342.

24.

Gans

H. J.

(1979). Deciding what’s news: A study of CBS evening news, NBC nightly news, newsweek, and time. New York, NY: Random House.

25.

Gitlin

(1980). The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making & unmaking of the new left. Berkeley: University of California Press.

26.

Godoy-Pressland

(2014). The weekend as a male entity: How Sunday newspaper sports reporting centres around male activities, interests and language (2008 and 2009). Leisure Studies, 33, 148–163.

27.

Goffman

E. G.

(1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

28.

Grayson

(2013). Editorial photographs and patterns of practice. Journalism Practice, 7, 314–328.

29.

Halbert

Latimer

(1994). “Battling” gendered language: An analysis of the language used by sports commentators in a televised coed tennis tournament. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11, 298–308.

30.

Hall

R. L.

Oglesby

C. A.

(2016). Stepping through the looking glass: The future for women in sport. Sex Roles, 74(7–8), 271–274.

31.

Halpert

(1988, 10). You call this adorable? An open letter to the producer of NBC Sports. Ms. Magazine, 17(4), 36–39.

32.

Hardin

(2005). Stopped at the gate: Women’s sports, “reader interest,” and decision making by editors. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82, 62–77.

33.

Hardin

(2009, 9 24). Does “new media” bring new attitudes toward women’s sports? Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women’s in Sport. Retrieved from https://tuckercenter.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/does-’new-media’-bring-new-attitudes-oward-women’s-sports/

34.

Hong

(2003). Soccer: A world sport for women. Soccer & Society, 4(2–3), 268–270.

35.

Jones

Murrell

A. J.

Jackson

(1999). Pretty versus powerful in the sports pages. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 23, 183–192.

36.

Kane

M. J.

(2013). The better sportswomen get, the more the media ignore them. Communication & Sport, 1, 231–236.

37.

Kane

M. J.

Greendorfer

S. L.

(1994). The media’s role in accommodating and resisting stereotyped images of women in sport. In Creedon

P. J.

(Ed.), Women, media and sport: Challenging gender values (pp. 28–44). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

38.

Kane

M. J.

LaVoi

N. M.

Fink

J. S.

(2013). Exploring elite female athletes’ interpretations of sport media images: A window into the construction of social identity and “selling sex” in women’s sports. Communication & Sport, 1, 269–298.

39.

Kian

Clavio

(2011). A comparison of online media and traditional newspaper coverage of the men’s and women’s U.S. open tennis tournaments. Journal of Sports Media, 6, 55–84.

40.

Kitto

(1989). Gender reference terms. British Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 185–187.

41.

LaVoi

N. M.

Kane

M. J.

(2011). Sociological aspects of sport. In Pedersen

Parks

J. B.

Quarterman

Thibault

(Eds.), Contemporary sport management (pp. 372–391). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

42.

MacArthur

P. J.

Angelini

J. R.

Billings

A. C.

Smith

L. R.

(2016). The dwindling Winter Olympic divide between male and female athletes: The NBA broadcast network’s primetime coverage of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. Sport in Society, 19, 1556–1572.

43.

Markovits

A. S.

Green

A. I.

(2017). FIFA, the video game: A major vehicle for soccer’s popularization in the United States. Sport in Society, 20, 716–734.

44.

Markovits

A. S.

Hellerman

S. L.

(2003). Women’s soccer in the United States: Yet another American ‘exceptionalism.’ Soccer and Society, 4, 14–29.

45.

McCombs

M. E.

Shaw

D. L.

(1972). The agenda-setting function of the mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176–187.

46.

Messner

M. A.

Cooky

(2010). Gender in televised sports: News and highlights shows, 1989-2009. Los Angeles, CA: USC Center for Feminist Research. Retrieved from https://dornsifecms.usc.edu/assets/sites/80/docs/tvsports.pdf

47.

Messner

M. A.

Duncan

M. C.

Jensen

(1993). Separating the men from the girls: The gendered language of televised sports. Gender and Society, 7, 121–137.

48.

Mitchell

(2016, 3 30). Soccer wars. New York Daily News. Retrieved from http://interactive.nydailynews.com/2016/03/how-us-soccer-mistreats-world-cup-winning-womens-national-team/

49.

Pedersen

P. M.

(2002). Examining equity in newspaper photographs. A content analysis of the print media photographic coverage of interscholastic athletics. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37, 303–318.

50.

Riffe

Lacy

Fico

(2014). Analyzing media messages: Using quantitative content analysis in research (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

51.

Scheufele

D. A.

Tewksbury

(2007). Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57, 9–20.

52.

Sherry

Osborne

Nicholson

(2016). Images of sports women: A review. Sex Roles, 74, 299–309.

53.

Wensing

E. H.

Bruce

(2003). Bending the rules: Media representations of gender during an international sporting event. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38, 387–396.

54.

White

(2013). Cathy Freeman and Australia’s Indigenous heritage: A new beginning for an old nation at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19, 153–170.

55.

Wolter

(2013). A quantitative analysis of photographs and articles on espnW: Positive progress for female athletes. Communication & Sport, 24, 1–28.