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Women remain underrepresented in sport media despite increased opportunities in
other facets of sport and journalism. Further, women who have held positions in
sport media are often perceived as being less credible than men in the field. In an
effort to understand why these perceptions exist, the present study examined the
influence of gender-role...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... statistics and standardized regression weights for each model are presented in Table 2. A visual of direct path estimates and their significance levels are illustrated in Figure 1. Hypothesis 1 posits that gender-role stereotyping would be negatively related to perceptions of female sportscaster credibility. ...
Citations
... While gender disparities in audience evaluations of announcer credibility have been detected (Greer & Jones, 2012;Harris, 2013), additional research on female broadcasting has examined questions of competency and sport literacy (Schoch, 2013), sexism on social media (Mudrick et al., 2017), as well as the reinforcement of gender-biased roles and stereotypical tropes resulting in unfair treatment and often harassment (Everbach, 2018). These unrelenting difficulties faced by female sports media members have produced inequitable identities along racial and gender lines. ...
During a 2018 Amazon Prime simulcast alongside the Fox broadcast announced by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer became the first all-female broadcast team for a National Football League game. Utilizing a national sample of 415 subjects, a four-cell post-test-only experimental design of the on-air commentary was utilized to examine perceptions of announcer credibility. Incorporating social identity theory, findings reveal women sportscasters were deemed credible, but if one affiliated with a presumed sporting out-group (female and non-White fans), this was not the case. Highly identified sport fans indicated a shift toward acceptance of all-female announcers of all-male sporting events.
... The theory has been supplemented over years to include perceived attractiveness, given its importance in contemporary endorsement strategy (Ohanian, 1990). In sports communication, prior research has explored sportscasters' physical and professional attributes that influence their source credibility, such as perceived authoritativeness (e.g., Etling & Young, 2007), expertise (e.g., Mudrick et al., 2016), attractiveness (e.g., Davis & Krawczyk, 2010;Mudrick & Lin, 2017), voice (Etling et al., 2011), and dynamism (e.g., Davis & Krawczyk, 2010;Mudrick et al., 2018). According to Ohanian (1990), perceived competence, authoritativeness, qualification, and expertness can roughly be used interchangeably with perceived expertise. ...
... As basketball is categorized as a masculine sport (Alvariñas-Villaverde et al., 2017), male sportscasters readily enjoy vicarious power, because of male athletes' achievements (Crawley et al., 2007). Thus, male reporters easily receive higher authoritativeness and knowledge ratings than their female counterparts (Etling & Young, 2007), with gender role beliefs negatively predicting the credibility ratings of female sportscasters (Mudrick et al., 2016). Therefore, sports audiences who hold stronger gender role beliefs tend to embrace the stereotype that women are naturally inappropriate for nor good at commenting about basketball, which reduces their continuance intentions (Mudrick et al., 2016). ...
... Thus, male reporters easily receive higher authoritativeness and knowledge ratings than their female counterparts (Etling & Young, 2007), with gender role beliefs negatively predicting the credibility ratings of female sportscasters (Mudrick et al., 2016). Therefore, sports audiences who hold stronger gender role beliefs tend to embrace the stereotype that women are naturally inappropriate for nor good at commenting about basketball, which reduces their continuance intentions (Mudrick et al., 2016). Based on the above reasoning, we hypothesize that: ...
A major challenge facing female sportscasters resides in their being frequently judged based on physical appearance. However, little is known about the influence of audience perceptions of female sports podcasters’ physical attractiveness when their image is unavailable. Drawing from source credibility and social role theories, the present study employed a posttest-only quasi-experimental design to examine whether Chinese female sports podcasters’ auditory cuteness influences audience perceptions of their credibility, information satisfaction, and podcast continuance intentions. Results demonstrate that female podcaster auditory cuteness is positively connected with audience information satisfaction and perceived attractiveness, both of which further predict perceived expertise. Moreover, audience gender role beliefs dampen their perceived expertise, which along with information satisfaction, is positively associated with podcast continuance intentions. Finally, stronger gender role believers rely more on perceived attractiveness when rating the female sportscaster’s expertise—and less on perceived expertise—when evaluating their podcast continuance intentions.
... Although the number of women engaged in sports journalism has increased over the last three decades, research confirms that men still predominate over women in the field (Franks and O'Neill, 2016;Mudrick et al., 2017). Most sports news departments are all but entirely masculine. ...
... Even though radio and television broadcasting now have a greater percentage of women working in sports than they used to have (cf. Boyle, 2006;Brisbane, 2021), studies have demonstrated the disadvantages that women are confronted with, especially when it comes to credibility, stereotyping, and sexism (Etling and Young, 2007;Mastro et al., 2012;Mudrick et al., 2017). In TV sports broadcasting, female reporters are mostly relegated to reporting from the side-lines, while their male colleagues do more prominent work, such as providing commentary and game analysis (Messner et al., 2000). ...
This study explores differences in the reporting of female and male sports journalists. Based on a brief review of the literature related to gender differences in sports journalism and the stereotypes associated with the work of female sports journalists, the paper identifies a purported ‘female writing style’ characterized by a focus on soft news, an emotional approach to reporting and reduced interest in statistical and analytical data. Using a quantitative content analysis, I reviewed 167 audio-visual and 50 written ice-hockey reports about Czech Extraliga produced by six sports journalists, who worked in leading Czech sports media departments. I observed the frequency with which the reporters presented statistical data, evaluated a performance, described emotions, recounted personal stories, and used original phrases. Comparing women’s and men’s output, it emerged that gender of the author did not have a dominant influence on the form of their reports and did not impact the use of specific language elements.
... Scholars unanimously agree that women are vastly under-represented in sports media, when it comes to personnel hired behind the scenes -to produce sport media content (Antunovic, 2018;Baker, 2008;Mudrick et al., 2017), and in the content itself (Calvo Ortega, 2014;Coche, 2015;Cooky et al., 2015;Dziubinski et al., 2013;Godoy-Pressland and Griggs, 2014;Kaiser, 2018;O'Neill and Mulready, 2015). ...
... Scholars have conducted extensive research on how sports journalists' routines and identities affect women's sports coverage (e.g. Hardin, 2005;Laucella et al., 2017;Mudrick et al., 2017;Theberge and Cronk, 1986), but most of that work has focused on media outlets (broadcast, print or Internet). Because of shrinking newsrooms, today's news industry relies heavily on news agencies; that is especially true for online news media outlets (Powers and Benson, 2014). ...
This study is a content analysis of Eurosport’s football coverage on its French, English, German and Spanish websites during the 2019 Women’s World Cup. It examines the place given to women’s football by leading sports news websites in Europe and explores cultural differences across those four countries while limiting corporate differences (as all four websites belong to the same company). Analysis found the women’s game represented up to 20% of coverage on two websites, much more than the usual 5% or less usually dedicated to women’s sports, but the tournament still took a back seat to offseason men’s club football. The production value also showed some sex differences with Eurosport’s staff resources seemingly more directed toward coverage of the men’s game – despite the Women’s World Cup being the only Europe-based senior tournament played by European nations during the study. Differences in coverage among the four countries studied suggest Spain is embracing women’s football more than its neighbours, and the vast colonial histories of France, Spain and the UK, and the international relations they shaped, are profoundly affecting the sex gap in football coverage.
... Acting in line with desirable stereotypes, then, has yielded higher credibility in several contexts, such as in television sportscasts (Mudrick et al., 2017), blogs (Armstrong and McAdams, 2009), or online bulletin boards (Embacher et al., 2018). Credibility refers to the ascribed authority and believability of a person or certain information (Roberts, 2010) and has been termed a key concept to understand online communication (Sundar, 2008). ...
... Reliability was high for both men (Cronbach's α = 0.82) and women (α = 0.88), mean indices yielded a slightly belowcenter distribution for men (M = 2.8; SD = 1.29) and a higher distribution for women (M = 3.7; SD = 1.17). Second, sexist attitude has also been shown to affect attitude toward gender (Becker and Wagner, 2009;Mudrick et al., 2017). Sexist attitude was operationalized through the Ambivalent Sexism Inventories to measure a combination of hostile and benevolent sexism against women (Glick and Fiske, 1997) and men (Glick and Fiske, 1999). ...
Gendered social roles raise assumptions about what female and male journalists ought to do. Prior studies have suggested that covering counter-stereotypical topics may decrease journalists’ source and their work’s message credibility. Pertaining also to prior studies on heuristic cues for credibility evaluation, user comments have been shown to serve as corrective, both positively and negatively affecting the perception of accompanying content. In an online survey with 417 German participants, we employed a 3 (author: female, male, and computer) × 2 (topic: stereotypically masculine and feminine) × 2 (comments: sexist and non-sexist) experimental design to investigate source and message credibility. Findings do not show differences in gender perception but between human authors (either female or male) and a computer (the control group). Covering counter-stereotypical topics indicates slightly less credibility for men and women if presented with non-sexist comments. In turn, sexist comments lead to slightly higher credibility, suggesting more elaborate engagement with sexism-affected content.
... Female journalists are generally excluded from sports sections because they are perceived to have less knowledge and hence less credibility and authority than male reporters (Etling and Young 2007;Koening and Eagly 2014). Even when women are sports commentators, they devote less time to female sports than their male counterparts (Mudrick, Burton, and Lin 2017). By contrast, Kian and Hardin (2009) found that female journalists are more apt to cover women's basketball while men predominantly write about men's basketball. ...
... Such depiction undermines and trivializes women's leadership in professional sport. Women's voices are almost missing both as journalists (between 0.8% and 2% of the total staff) (Billings, Butterworth, and Turman 2017b;Cummins, Ortiz, and Rankine 2018) and as external sources of information (8%) (Mudrick, Burton, and Lin 2017;Denham and Cook 2006) compared to a strong male authorship (between 36% and 47% of journalists, and 58% of external sources). According to Coche and Tuggle (2017, 5) "male sports professionals (athletes, coaches, officials, etc.) are used more often as sources that their female counterpart are". ...
This paper analyzes the differences in the representation of women and men in basketball news in the Spanish digital sports press during 2016 Olympic Games from a gender perspective with the aim of investigating whether media coverage was unequal. The sample comprises 679 news articles published in Marca.com and MundoDeportivo.com from 1 July to 30 September 2016. The study analyzed 15 variables: date, sport, sex of main subject, nationality, number of photographs, authorship, external sources of information, direct and indirect speech, news about medals, main topic, representation of the main subjects, gender marking, and presence of gender stereotypes and their typology in the text and photographs. Results show a clear inequality in the representation of women and men both (i) quantitatively and (ii) qualitatively: (i) female teams were underrepresented in the information and the photographs and (ii) the nature of the content. Finally, it is argued that greater coverage of female athletes by itself is insufficient to achieve equality unless it is accompanied by a qualitative change.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/EXE4ISNRNQHWWXEEMTZQ/full?target=10.1080/17512786.2021.2004199
... While 29.6% of youth fathers work as workers, it is known that 1.2% of them are unemployed. In this study, the validity and reliability of the scale used were checked first(Mudrick & Lin, 2017). ...
This research examines the perceptions and values of the life of students studying in tertiary institutions regarding gender roles. For this purpose, 324 students were randomly selected and their Attitudes towards Gender Roles and Life Values were measured along with several socio-demographic questions. 35.2% of the students who participated in this study were male, and 64.8% were female students. Judging from the average scale according to gender, it can be seen that the average female student is higher than male students. When youth views on gender roles were examined, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference (p <0.05) between the genders across most of the propositions. In addition, it is observed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the dimensions of student life values and egalitarian gender roles, which are sub-dimensions of gender perceptions and the role of gender in marriage. The results of this study are important to reveal adolescent views on gender.
... These barriers are more pronounced for those working in sports, as women in sports media are vastly underrepresented (Lapchick 2018). In sportscasting, perceptions about physical appearance create an additional barrier for women to advance in the industry (Davis and Krawczyk 2010;Mudrick et al. 2017). In sum, Fuller (2008, p. 204) noted that for women, the "chances of making it in the sportscasting field are especially difficult." ...
... While male sportscasters were perceived to be more credible when they were observed to be more attractive, for female sportscasters, the relationship between attractiveness and perceptions of credibility was curvilinear (ibid.). Another study (Mudrick et al. 2017) found that participants who endorsed gender-role stereotypes and sexist attitudes (e.g., the perception that women know less about sports) perceived a female sportscaster as less credible. However, gender-role stereotypes and sexist attitudes had no relationship with perceived credibility of a male sportscaster. ...
Women competing on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour recently began wearing clothing that diverted from historic norms. Some LPGA stakeholders found the attire to be distasteful, resulting in the implementation of a dress code dictating what participants could wear. LPGA members and outside stakeholders were somewhat taken aback by the dress code, declaring that the guidelines were essentially policing the women’s bodies and that the LPGA was showing a lack of trust that players will wear athletically appropriate attire. Our findings uncovered divergent reactions to the dress code and indicated the female athlete paradox still significantly impacts women’s professional golf.
... To better understand whether Storm and Kremer's commentary deviated from the Buck-Aikman commentary, a comparative content analysis was conducted, answering the call from Mudrick, Burton, and Lin (2017) for future research on gender differences in announcing by comparing comment descriptors used by male and female announcers for the same live sporting event. Through content analysing both broadcasts from both pairs of announcers, determinations can be offered regarding whether the dialogues used by the male and female teams were taxonomically different and, if so, in what topic areas. ...
... The sports press box has been globally mired in a similarly slow allowance and acceptance of female journalists and announcers in a masculine form of gender segregation (Adams, Ashton, Lupton, & Pollack, 2014;Everbach, 2018;Harris, 2013). It was not until the 1970s that female reporters were assigned a newspaper sports' beat, and female sports journalists and editors have historically hovered around 10% with little fluctuation (Grubb & Billiot, 2010;Mudrick et al., 2017;Schmidt, 2018). Ironically, the lower participation numbers were counterintuitive compared to more female students occupying journalism majors in college (Harrison, 2018;Schmidt, 2018). ...
... Research of women in sports broadcasting and reporting has centred on questions of competency (Schoch, 2013), credibility (Genovese, 2015;Harris, 2013), charges of sexism (Mudrick et al., 2017), and construction of performative and stereotypical tropes of gender-biased roles that resulted in harassment but also mobilization (Everbach, 2018;Schoch, 2013). These persistent problems faced by women in sports media have produced 'fragmented' identities along gender, racial, and professional boundaries that positioned female journalists in a double bind of inclusion and exclusion based on performing female identity traits in a masculine constructed media profession (Hardin & Shain, 2006;van Zoonen, 1998). ...
On 27 September 2018, history was made when Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer became the first all-female broadcast team to call a major professional men’s team sport – a National Football League game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Minnesota Vikings. Storm provided the play-by-play and Kremer was the analyst for a ‘Thursday Night Football’ livestream on Amazon Prime, which was simulcast alongside a Fox television broadcast with veteran announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. For viewers, the game represented seismic changes to a media landscape that had historically promoted aggression and a disruption to a sports ecosystem that routinely reinforces male-dominated gender norms. To better understand whether differences were advanced in the dialogues of the two broadcast teams, content analyses of the Amazon broadcast and the Fox broadcast were conducted. Attributes of athletic successes, failures, and physicality/personality were coded as verbal descriptors to allow comparison. A total of 777 descriptors showed significant differences in the frequency of the three classification areas, yet only one verbal descriptor difference was detected; the male team disproportionately elevated successes due to athletic ability. Results and the implications of these findings are discussed.
... News consumers evaluate the credibility of news organizations and news reporters based on numerous factors, including, at times, their own gender and the gender of news reporters. Research on gender and media credibility has found that men are often viewed as more journalistically credible, particularly with regard to topics considered serious, like politics and crime (Weibel, Wissmath & Groner, 2008;Brann & Himes, 2010), or those perceived to be more masculine, like sports (Mudrick, Burton & Lin, 2017). Contributing to the perception that male reporters are more credible than women reporters may be that TV news anchors, reporters, and on-camera experts have historically been overwhelmingly male (Cann & Mohr, 2001). ...
This study examined interviewer gender effects on attitudes toward male and female journalists in a survey experiment in six Arab countries. Respondents (N=5,040) in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE were read a scenario, by a male or female interviewer, of either a male or female journalist covering a political scandal, and were then asked about the journalist’s perceived credibility. Interviewer gender (female) affected ratings of journalist conscientiousness in four of six countries (positively in Tunisia and UAE, and negatively in Jordan and Lebanon), and negatively affected knowledgeability ratings in Lebanon. Implications for research on media credibility, gender bias, and survey research are discussed.
