IS THE REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE ATHLETES IN THE SERBIAN MEDIA GENDER BALANCED? REPORTS FROM THE 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to present an analysis of media coverage of athletes during the 2012 London Olympics, to determine whether there is a difference in media coverage between male and female athletes and possibly differences in ideological gender modeling in sport. The sample of the research material consisted of articles published from July 27th to August 12th, 2012, found in the archives of the sports sections of daily newspapers (Politika, Kurir), as well as the portal of the RTS public broadcasting system, which is at the very peak of the most accessed media in Serbia. The results have shown that there was a greater number of articles on men’s sport (p=0.01), a greater number of words in articles depicting men (p=0.01) and more photographs depicting male athletes (p=0.01). The analysis of individual compared to team photographs shows that men were represented more in groups than individually, and that women were to a greater extent represented individually. The results indicate that female athletes are represented more on the field than outside of it, and that men are more often represented at higher levels of body exposure (levels three and four). The general conclusion can be drawn that female athletes in the Serbian media were quantitatively less represented, but that their representations in photographs were more gender balanced than expected based on previous research.

Keywords

• sport
• gender
• the media
• content analysis
• the olympic games