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1. Introduction
“The concept of ‘emphasizing on the male and deemphasizing on the female’ has been held long by the Taiwanese, even on the basketball court.”
By Dr. dd (2004, March 23) on Apple Daily.
1.1 Research Background
In Taiwan, the fact that women basketball has been overlooked by the government and the media is just like an elephant in the room. In June 2008, the coach of the national women basketball team, Ling-yao Hong, revealed her sorrow and anger for the neglect of the women basketball by the basketball association in Taiwan in two text messages posted on the official website of Cathay Women
Basketball Team by referring to the national women basketball team as “the neglected blown-off kite” after losing the Olympics qualifying tournaments in Spain1. Not only did the basketball association fail to offer enough budget for the team, but also the media in Taiwan were not interested in publicizing the games, giving rise to many complaints among the women basketball fans at that time.
On the most popular Bulletin Board Station, PPT (bbs://bbs.ppt.cc), the unique social online community in Taiwan providing space for instant, free-of-charge, open
communication and freedom of speech, there are forums such as G-Basketball, rosachien, and WSBL dedicated to women basketball with comments supporting
1 Cathay Women Basketball Team. (2008). Two text messages [Announcement posted on the World Wide Web]. Taiwan: Hong, L. Y. Retrieved Jun 12, 2008 from the World Wide Web:
https://www.cathaylife.com.tw/bc/cwb/html/HttpDispatcher/IndexAction/Prompt?ne wTxRequest=true.
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women basketball and cheering for female basketball players. There are also posted complaints about the local basketball association not paying equal attention to both male and female basketball. That is, fewer women basketball games are broadcasted.
Some even called for greater support for broadcasting more women basketball games.
For example, one fan with the ID as hikaruyuro wrote a comment titled as,
“There is no women basketball in Taiwan” to express disappointment after finding the splendidly designed 30th Jones Cup’s official website had almost no information about women basketball2. In another online comment with the title as “Why isn’t the
women basketball included in the Olympic broadcasting schedule?”, a viewer who found women basketball games receiving much less media attention than women soccer games advocated other fans to put pressure on the television station that broadcasted the 2004 Olympics3.
Although there are no statistics or measures for how the public perceives the sufficiency of women basketball broadcasts, some past research has suggested that the media do neglect women sports, either intentionally or unintentionally. According to Media Report to Women (2007, p. 1), news about women sports takes up only about 8% of newspaper sports sections in United States. Similarly, Tuggle (1997) found that the coverage of women sports was less than 5% on Sports Center of ESPN and Sports Tonite of CNN.
In addition to the limited media coverage, women sports were also found to be described with more lopsided, stereotypical contexts that portrayed female athletes as
2 Posted with the ID, hikaruyuro, on 2008, Jul. 11. There is no women basketball in Taiwan (台灣沒有 女子籃球). Retrieved on 2008, Dec. 20 on bulletin board “rosachien” of bbs://bbs.ptt.cc.
3 Posted with the ID, themiracle, on 2004, Aug. 12. Why isn’t the women basketball included in the Olympic broadcasting schedule? (奧運專播節目表為什麼沒有女籃). Retrieved on 2008, Dec. 20 on bulletin board “G-Basketbal” of bbs://bbs.ptt.cc.
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立 政 治 大 學
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l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
over-feminized and less powerful, either physically or mentally (Hardin & Whiteside, 2008). For example, there seems to be more women sports coverage of tennis and gymnastics, emphasizing the glamour and grace of these sports. There are also a handful of studies examining media coverage of women sports in the Olympic Games, all indicating a problem of gendered presentation of female athletes (e.g., Daddario, 1994; Roedl, 2007).
1.2 Significance of Study
In Taiwan, there are few studies on the media coverage of women sports, with only two master theses found (i.e., 洪嘉 蔆, 2003; 連思晨, 2008). The former studied the newspaper news on various biliards events in Taiwan with the findings that the gendered stereotype in media representation for female athletes marginalizes and trivializes their performance in sports. The latter studied television coverage of women basketball and found out that gender disproportion exists in the Taiwan sport programs. The current study is aimed to more closely examine the gendered coverage for basketball in Taiwan’s newspapers, which have been suggested to play a more influential role in setting media or public agenda than television (Benton & Frazier, 1976; King 1994). More specifically, the present study examined the coverage of Taiwan’s national women and men basketball teams in the Jones Cup in the past three years. The Jones Cup is the international basketball tournaments held annually in Taiwan since 1977 for both the male and the female players. Newspaper coverage of the Jones Cup from 2007-2009 was content analyzed, along with in-depth interviews with the reporters of the coded articles.
The results not only revealed the differences between media coverage of men and women’s basketball games in Taiwan, but also provided examples of better and fairer coverage of women basketball games based on the reporting patterns and styles identified. These examples may serve as references or models for the reporters who
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wish to improve their reporting on women sports. In addition to the content analysis of newspaper coverage, interviews with reporters were also conducted. The
interviewers not only helped understand why the gender disparity existed, but also helped identify potential ways to improve gendered presentation of female athletes as a result of a better understanding of the editorial process. In short, the purposes of the current study provides and offers practical suggestions of how to fairly report women basketball games and other women sports.