Media framing of women’s football during the COVID-19 pandemic

Keith D. Parry, Beth G. Clarkson, Ali Bowes, Laura Grubb, David Rowe

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article examines British media coverage of women’s association football during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, to identify how the media framed the women’s game and how these frames could shape the public perceptions of it. Through a database search of British-based news coverage of women’s football, 100 news articles were identified in the first 6 months after the start of the pandemic. A thematic analysis was conducted, and five dominant frames were detected in the context of COVID-19: 1) financial precariousness of women’s football; 2) the commercial prioritisation of men’s football; 3) practical consideration of the sport (e.g., alterations to national and international competitions); 4) debating the future of women’s football and 5) concern for players (e.g., welfare, uncertain working conditions). These frames depart from the past trivialisation and sexualisation of women’s sport, demonstrate the increased visibility of women’s football, and shift the narrative towards the elite stratum of the game. Most of this reporting was by women journalists, while men were shown to write less than women about women’s football. This research advocates continued diversification of the sports journalism workforce to dissolve the hegemonic masculine culture that still largely dominates the industry.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)592-615
Number of pages24
JournalCommunication and Sport
Volume11
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

  • framing theory
  • women’s sport
  • coronavirus
  • women’s association football
  • sports media

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