Welcome back to Volleyball by the Numbers!
It’s been awhile! I’ve been on hiatus as I focused on finishing my junior year, and in particular, working on my AP Research project about the representation of female athletes in the media. I had a lot of fun with this project, and I think my findings were super interesting, so I wanted to share them!
My starting point for this project was the increased attention being paid to women’s sports over the last few years. This was noticeable in the rise of Athletes Unlimited, sold-out arenas for women’s volleyball games, celebrities wearing “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” t-shirts, multi-million dollar endorsements for female athletes, and neighborhood hangouts dedicated to women’s sports, like Untamed Spirits, the first female sports bar in Los Angeles (I went to its grand opening over the weekend and it was incredible).
If you found your way to this blog, then I assume you already care about and support women’s sports! But this isn’t just important to people interested in sports. Understanding how women are portrayed in the media is a crucial step to combating negative portrayals and empowering women.
Right now, there is excitement about the increasing coverage of female athletes. The next step is to highlight that coverage is not enough–who is covered and how they are covered matters. Increased coverage is only an improvement for female athletes if the coverage is also empowering.
Research on this topic now can help shape how women are covered in the future. Researchers at the USC Annenberg School of Communications have an annual report on how women in Hollywood are portrayed. I KNOW POLITICS, an international advocacy organization, has a report on “Women in Politics and the Media”. These reports get attention, and spearhead demands for change. My research can focus attention on how the media is covering female athletes, and can be a rallying cry to continue to promote change.
This is the intro first post in a series on my findings from my research on the representation of female athletes in the media.
Part 2 will look at both the historical underrepresentation of female athletes in the media, and the recent increase in coverage of women’s sports.
Part 3 will move beyond looking at just the amount of coverage, but examine the nature of the coverage. Has how female athletes are being covered changed along with the changes in the amount of coverage they receive?
I hope you find this new line of research as interesting as I did this past year!
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Photo Credit: Sun Devil Athletics