#MoreThanMean
With all of the benefits the Internet provides, perhaps its biggest flaw is the platform it provides for bullying. Dubbed "cyberbullying", the phenomenon has become more than a buzzword, but a harsh reality for nearly everyone on the Internet. The anonymity social media provides has allowed this to progress to a point past mean comments, but actual harassment. To shed light on how this is affecting women in sports broadcasting, the campaign, #MoreThanMean was developed. In the video below, men are forced to come face to face with female sports writers as they read some of the most heinous comments they receive online, although they were not the ones who sent them. While only two female sports broadcasters are featured in the video (Julie DiCaro and Sarah Spain), they are not alone in their battle between wanting to do their job to the best of their abilities and protecting themselves from the harassment they receive for doing it.
To see just how toxic this environment is, I explored some of the top stories about women in sports broadcasting and their comments. From "The hottest female sports reporters" to "23 Men On How They Really Feel About Female Sports Announcers", these articles are routinely published and garner comments all in the similar vain of the #MoreThanMean campaign. To do this, I selected the top 25 articles that appear on Google when searching "women/female sports broadcasting", where I'll be analyzing a few things: the content of the article, the content of the top comment(s), the gender of the writer, year of release, and the source. The data for this can be found here.
Content
Of the 25 articles I examined, 13 of them pertained to the performance of these female broadcasters and 12 pertained to their appearance. I was surprised to see that the numbers were so close, considering how many of the initial articles I found were based on these reporter's appearance. Most of these articles were ranked lists of these women by their appearance, while some looked at women in sports broadcasting who's career has been impacted by their appearance, like Erin Andrews. The articles about performance, however, all had the same message behind them: women in this industry are treated unfairly, both in their treatment and employment. This suggests that the two topics are equally as important for readers online, something that is exclusive to women in the field. Society has always placed extraordinary pressure on women because of their appearance, especially for those who have a presence in media, so the topics of these articles aren't surprising.
Gender
As far as the writers of these articles, 15 of them were women, whereas only 8 were men. This is perhaps the most surprising statistic I found in my research. I think most would expect women to support one another, but women writers were behind some the articles based on appearance. While that does mean that women are being employed to write about sports, they're simultaneously using their position to appeal to stereotypes about the industry. As for the male writers, they wrote about both appearance and performance, something I find rather commendable because I was expecting all of the male writers to only comment on appearance. Among the outliers were the two unknown articles, both of which were ranked lists of the most attractive women in sports media. I wasn't that surprised to these unclaimed by an author, especially because of the content. I don't see this as something someone would want to claim as their own because it only serves as a post to get clicks, rather than acknowledge the accomplishments (or plights) of these women.
Year of Release
Originally, I didn't think the year each article was posted would show anything about the topic. However, upon collecting the information, I realize that it shows how long this has been a topic being discussed online. For at least 6 years, people have been debating how women are portrayed in sports media, whether it be their appearance or their lack of representation. Yet, this information also shows how infrequently the topic of women in sports broadcasting is making front page news. For articles from 2010 to remain in the top 25 articles on Google shows that while the subject has been discussed for many years, those discussing it haven't made a significant impact because not only is it still being discussed, but new discussions aren't be recognized (no articles were from 2017).
Source
When I looked into the sources of all 25 articles, I was expecting most of them to come from the same sources, most of which would be websites reporting on sports. I was surprised to see only one publisher with more than one article about women in sports broadcasting (Bleacher Report, which is a sports website). There were only four other websites dedicated solely to sports in the top 25, which suggests that these women are universally relevant. The variety of websites range from women's health to general news, showing that women in sports media are an important topic for a wide spectrum of readers. Yet, as the divide in what the content being posted shows, why people are interested in these women differs among all websites. Additionally, the variety suggests that websites are only reporting on the topic infrequently, which leads me to believe that these articles don't obtain the same traction as other articles, making them less viable for the website even if the topic interests a wide audience.
Top Comments
The above comment is the top comment from The Richest article, entitled "The 15 Hottest Female Sports Reporters". This comment expresses an opinion I noticed throughout many of the articles based on these women's appearance. For the most part, the comments were made by males who were criticizing the lists or them women on the lists. With how many of these comments I saw, it became evident that the comment sections were more concerned with appearance and their opinions on the subject than the women themselves. While obviously, this comment is not as heinous as the comments read by reporters in the #MoreThanMean video, it still manages to objectify women because of their position in the media.
|
The above comment is the top comment from the Thought Catalog article, entitled "23 Men On How They Really Feel About Female Sports Announcers". This comment, while typed out in complete thoughts, is an opinion reiterated throughout the comment sections of articles about these women's performances as sports broadcasters. While the article it comes from is clearly pandering to these types of comments, articles about similar topics that were not pandering resulted in similar comments. For readers of these articles, there's an overwhelming majority that believes that women don't have a place in sports broadcasting because they're simply using their looks for media attention and have nothing to add. Yet, they're also the same readers who comment about their appearance (as seen by the previous comment), making it unclear what these readers are arguing.
|