The Ball Game Is for the Boys: The Visual Framing of Female Athletes on National Sports Networks’ Instagram Accounts

SNs and Contractual Affiliations

SNs play a significant role in the way sports information reaches sports audiences. Research suggests that SNs assign greater salience to major professional sports leagues and collegiate athletic conferences with which they have broadcast partnerships (Johnson & Romney, 2017). These agreements give SNs exclusive access to athletes and athletic events that drive traffic to SN properties––including their SMPs––where news, information, highlights, and photojournalism are disseminated. How gender is framed to SNs’ large followings on SMPs contributes to the public’s perceptions of gender and female athleticism.

The authors acknowledge that national SNs lean towards showcasing male athletes and their athletic achievements. As mentioned, SNs have lucrative contractual affiliations with most men’s professional and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) leagues and teams (Badenhausen, 2012; Karp, 2013). Additionally, men’s seasons tend to be longer, which provides more opportunity for coverage. There is a proliferation of men’s off-season programming such as professional sports draft coverage that is increasingly popular. As a result, the authors expect SN SMPs will likely include a higher percentage of men’s sports coverage on their SMPs.

However, many SNs also have broadcast agreements with women’s sports leagues, meaning the contractual relationship between SNs and male sports leagues and teams does not fully explain the disparity in coverage. Audiences want more sports and information about female sports ( Global interest in women’s sports, 2018). Furthermore, SNs claim to be journalistic organizations (Steinberg, 2018; Stiegman, 2012). If that is the case, the expectation of professional journalism standards is presumed––regardless of gender. SNs' commitment to sports journalism suggests that SMPs’ content reflect all sports, including female athletics. SNs’ lack of heterogeneity in their sports coverage has been examined and while the issue is not exclusive to female sports, the increase in female sporting participation warrants more of their attention (Schreiber, 2008). SNs do have limited female sports content, but most of the coverage is shared either on female-specific sites or during times in a sportscast where there are fewer viewers (Cooky et al., 2015). Demoting female sports coverage to less prominent parts of news and highlight shows, or to websites with less promotion and traffic, does little to engender interest in female leagues. ESPN publishes espnW, a female-focused website with its own social media presence. Yet, the espnW site is not a prime feature of ESPN’s primary website (ESPN.com), and its social media metrics are far below the network’s main SMP channels. As Cooky, Messner, and Musto (2015) have shown, gender representation in sports programming is far from equitable and the little female coverage that is shared is underwhelming.

This research extends the analysis of gender representation to SN SMPs to determine whether there likewise exists an underrepresentation of female athletes and coverage on SNs’ primary social media channels despite the growth of female athletics and interest in their sports. SMPs present broader opportunities for SNs to showcase female athletes and to provide news and information about their athletic events. Unlike in TV where time is a fixed commodity and where there exists pressure to maintain viewership, SMPs present fewer disadvantages of showcasing broader sports coverage. Therefore, SNs might feel more free editorially to share female content on SMPs than they would during news and highlight show programs.

Framing of Gender in Sport

A robust body of scholarship is clear: Female athletes have long been marginalized in TV and news coverage in favor of male athleticism (Angelini & Billings, 2010; Angelini, Billings, & MacArthur, 2012; Billings, Brown, & Brown, 2013; Billings et al., 2008; Billings & Eastman, 2003; Billings, MacArthur, Licen, & Wu, 2009; Clavio & Eagleman, 2011; Cranmer, Brann, & Bowman, 2014; Davis & Tuggle, 2012; Fink & Kensicki, 2002; Godoy-Pressland & Griggs, 2014; Hardin, Chance, Dodd, & Hardin, 2002; Cooky et al., 2013; Cooky et al., 2015). Such marginalization is evident in gender-representation studies of televised Olympic coverage, where female participation has increased yet for many years significant media coverage of female athletes and events did not (Angelini & Billings, 2010; Angelini et al., 2012; Billings et al., 2009; Billings et. al., 2013; Davis & Tuggle, 2012; Godoy-Pressland & Griggs, 2014). These studies showed that males historically receive a higher portion of prime-time coverage than female athletes (Billings & Eastman, 2003; Billings et al., 2008). In the 2012 Summer Games in London, researchers found that the language used by the mostly male broadcasters often framed female athletes “as ‘girls’ rather than ‘women’” and “gave them secondary status compared to male athletes” (Kian, Bernstein, & McGuire, 2013, p. 143). Additionally, stories that focused on female athletes often emphasized female body parts that appealed to the mostly male journalists covering the Games (Kian et al., 2013). Scholars argue that such decisions lead to “ambivalent” media coverage about women, and worse, they can “trivialize women’s efforts and success” (Wensing & Bruce, 2003, p. 387). Musto, Cooky & Messner (2017) observe that female athletic achievements have made recent inroads in the national sports discourse; yet, despite these successes, the dialogue surrounding female athletics is generally indifferent. The authors describe this apathy as “gender-bland sexism” and suggest that female athletes are framed in uninspired ways and appear dull and lifeless compared to their male counterparts (p. 573). Bruce (2016) chronicles the complex duality of feminism and sport and suggests that even as more female sports coverage exists, women are still framed as the “other”—or the interloper—in a traditional masculine space.

Researchers have discovered positive signs regarding equality in Olympic gender framing. The examination of recent primetime Olympic events indicates that broadcast executives are giving female athletes and events coveted viewing slots. Coche and Tuggle (2016) noted that NBC placed more female athletes and their events in primetime slots than men. The pattern was repeated in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi (MacArthur, Angelini, Billings, & Smith, 2016). The official Olympic broadcasters of other countries followed suit (Xu, Billings, Scott, Lewis & Sharpe, 2019). Olsson’s (2016) study of major American and British news publications revealed more balanced coverage between male and female Olympic events. These encouraging markers suggest that broadcasters and news organizations are offering more equitable coverage between male and female athletes.

However, the equitable coverage of female athletics is limited to large dual-sex events like the Olympics. Outside of these events, equitable news sports coverage of day-to-day female sporting events is remote. Cooky et al.’s (2015) follow-up study of female news coverage on SNs’ news and highlight shows reveals that significantly more time is devoted to male sports than to female sports. In addition to a lack of female sports highlights on these programs, the authors discovered that there exists a “stark contrast between the exciting, amplified delivery of stories about men’s sports and the often dull, matter-of-fact delivery of women’s sports stories” (p. 261). They concluded that the underrepresentation of women in sports news coverage insinuates that female athletes are “covered in ways that convey the message to audiences that women’s sport is less important, less exciting, and therefore, less valued than men’s sports” (p. 264).

Visual Framing of Women in Sport

The lack of female sports news coverage by SNs is conspicuous, but it is more troubling that females who are shown are often framed along gender stereotypes when they are visually depicted in media coverage (Cranmer et al., 2014; Godoy-Pressland & Griggs, 2014). Female athletes are frequently portrayed in ways that represent traditional female attributes such as grace, beauty, balance, and aesthetics (Godoy-Pressland & Griggs, 2014). A number of studies have utilized analytical tools to identify visual representation of female athletes in sports news coverage. These include a content analysis of sports images, examining the frequency of photos depicting female athletes, the sports the athletes are represented in, the way athletes are framed within the image, the angle of the camera, the focus of the image, the position of the athlete, and the location portrayed within the image (Godoy-Pressland & Griggs, 2014, p. 809).

Utilizing visual framing analysis, Fink and Kensicki’s (2002) examination of Sports Illustrated magazine coverage found that women were visually overrepresented in traditionally feminine sports and were routinely portrayed outside the field of play. The authors concluded that women continue to be depicted along “stereotypical and traditional conceptions of femininity that supersede their athletic ability” (p. 317). Clavio and Eagleman (2011) performed a content analysis of images shared on popular sports blogs and found that men received more frequent photographic coverage than women. In addition, Clavio and Eagleman found that the female images that were shared were more likely to be sexually suggestive. A visual analysis of images published in ESPN The Magazine’s “The Body Issue” found that images included in the magazine de-emphasized female athleticism and displayed female athletes in more overtly sexual poses compared to their male counterparts (Cranmer et al., 2014). The sexual exploitation of female athletes in both discourse and visual representation is well noted (Bruce, 2016; Daniels, 2012; Kane, LaVoi & Fink, 2013; Weaving, 2012).

Hardin, Chance, Dodd, and Hardin (2002) examined 1,425 images of athletes participating in the 2000 Summer Games from five American daily newspapers to determine whether the photos reinforced gender differences in sports media coverage. Researchers recorded the gender of the athletes in the photos, the placement of the dominant subjects in the photos, the photo angle, whether the athletes were shown in a state of activity or passivity, and whether the athletes were part of a team or individual sport. Hardin et al. (2002) elucidate that it is stereotypically more appropriate for female athletes to compete in individual sports than team sports. In addition, the researchers noted whether the sport could be categorized as one of the following: “strength” sports, “in which one opponent overpowers another by physical strength”; “aesthetic” sports, “where success is determined on the basis of grace and proper form”; and “neutral” sports, which “contained all other sports” (Duncan & Sayaovong, 1990, p. 104). Hardin et al. discovered “some improvements in newspaper coverage of female Olympians” (p. 64), but there still existed gender bias in favor of male athletes, who were more likely to be the dominant focus of the photos. Female athletes were more often shown in a state of passivity.

Research Questions

The current study examined images shared on the four major SNs’ Instagram feeds to understand how gender differences are framed. The variables examined include the gender of the dominant photo subject, whether the subjects are in a state of movement in the field of play or in a state of passivity outside the field of play, the type of sport (strength, neutral, or aesthetic) depicted in the images, and whether images depict athletes in team or individual sports.

The body of scholarship overwhelmingly suggests that in sports media, male sports are seen as more salient and their participants are represented as relying heavily on athleticism, while female sports are ignored and female athletes are more likely to be represented with a focus on traditional female attributes such as beauty and aesthetics. Recent research has also shown that SN SMPs exhibit framing bias in their selection of images to share on social media—specifically in exhibiting stereotypical differences (Johnson & Romney, 2017). Built on the framework of previous scholarship, yet driven by new challenges and opportunities presented by social media, this study proposes the following research questions:

Research Question 1: Do SNs overrepresent men and male athletic events on SMPs?

Coding

The unit of analysis for this study was each image shared in an Instagram post. A team of two coders was trained to examine each screenshot and code for six variables germane to this project. Coders were instructed to code based on the content of the photo itself and not include the text of any posts or comments. Independent variables included the network that shared the post and the gender of the primary subject(s) of the photo. Images that contained a nonhuman primary photo subject were removed from the sample because they could not be coded based on the gender of the photo subject(s). Coders were instructed to identify only the gender of the primary photo subject(s) of an image. If an image contained other people in the background of the photograph, spectators for example, coders were trained to ignore them. If an image contained multiple photo subjects of different genders, a third category (“mixed”) was chosen.

Dependent variables included the nature and type of sport represented in the photograph, whether the primary photo subject was portrayed in an active or passive context, and whether the primary subject of the photograph was an athlete. ⁴ Sport nature was identified using established literature on biased representation in sports media. The researchers followed Hardin et al. (2002) in using the definition outlined by Duncan and Sayaovong (1990), who divided sports into three categories: strength, aesthetic, and neutral.

For the purposes of the present study, however, Duncan and Sayaovong’s definition was slightly modified because Instagram presents new challenges as compared to traditional media. For example, while many previous studies focused on newspaper images that perhaps primarily focused on athletic competition, the nature of social media often leads to self-published images that often feature moments away from the field. Therefore, the researchers added options for “nonathletic” roles which included all images that did not contain moments captured from a sport’s field of play, such as “selfies,” moments captured during the subject’s daily lives, postgame interviews, or images taken in the broadcast booths. In addition, while previous scholars have listed basketball among the neutral sports (Duncan & Sayaovong, 1990; Hardin et al., 2002), the authors included it among strength sports because of its commonalities with other strength sports, including an emphasis on athleticism, physical contact, and impeding the progress of the opponent. Strength sports included such competitions as American football, basketball, hockey, rugby, wrestling, or boxing. Examples of aesthetic sports included gymnastics or diving, whereas neutral sports included such sports as baseball, soccer, golf, or horse racing. Coders also identified whether a sport was primarily competed as a member of a team or as an individual. For this “sport type” variable, coders were instructed to identify “team” sports as those involving more than two individuals working together. If an image contained more than one sport, coders listed the image as containing “multiple sports” for both the nature and type variable.

Finally, a photo that implied motion or narrative elements (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996) was coded as being active, whereas portraits, snapshots, or selfies that appeared to be “staged” were labeled as “passive” photos.

Analysis

After training concluded, the researchers conducted a check for intercoder reliability using approximately one tenth of the overall sample of images (n = 189). Using a Cohen’s κ (Lombard, Snyder-Duch, & Bracken, 2002), the coders tested each of the variables for reliability. The initial intercoder reliability analysis returned results in the acceptable .80 range (Lombard et al., 2002) for three of the variables: sport nature (K = .861), sport type (K = .852), and network (K = .964). Coders were retrained to code for gender, athletes, and active/passive images. Another 190 images were coded for a second reliability check in which the gender (K = .914), athletes (K = .851), and active/passive (K = .820) variables passed by an acceptable margin. The coders proceeded to code the full sample, after which χ² tests were conducted to test the relationships between the independent and dependent variables. Finally, Cramer’s V was used to measure effect sizes, using Cohen’s (1988) general guidelines for small, medium, and large effects.

The total sample included 1,856 images, of which 268 did not contain a primary human subject. Because it would not be possible to code for gender in an image without a human subject, those 268 images were removed from the overall sample (N = 1,587). Of the different networks, ESPN (n = 616) posted the most images, with CBS Sports (n = 508) and Fox Sports (n = 495) sharing similar numbers, and NBC Sports (n = 237) sharing the fewest.