Sports Media
Mass media coverage of sports may seem ubiquitous, given the 24-7 availability of talk and images on television, the Internet and print media. But I learned long ago from the great writer Tillie Olsen that if we want to understand the workings of power, it is crucial to attend as much to silences as it is to noise. There are three ways in which I have studied what sports media ignores, what it covers and how it covers it.
First, I have conducted a longitudinal content and textual analysis of gender in televised news and highlights programs. Started in 1989-90 with Margaret Carlisle Duncan and continuing in recent years with Cheryl Cooky, we have examined both the quantity and quality of coverage of men’s and women’s sports, replicating this study every five years. Several of the articles below resulted from this study.
Second, I am interested in how the sports media handles a particular story, especially a “scandal.” In a 1993 analysis of a drugs and wife abuse story about boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, William Solomon and I developed an approach for examining how journalists deploy news frames that illuminate certain aspects of a story, while obscuring others. More recently, Faye Wachs, Cheryl Cooky, Shari Dworkin and I drew from this approach to analyze the Don Imus controversy.
Third, since sports broadcasts are still aimed at a male demographic, I am interested in the dominant gendered messages that are pitched to boys and men as consumers. I have done content studies of sports that boys watch, and with Jeff Montez de Oca, of how beer and liquor ads pitch their products to insecure men.
Articles
Michela Musto, Cheryl Cooky & Michael A. Messner (2017) “‘From fizzle to sizzle!’: Televised sports news and the production of gender-bland sexism.” Gender & Society 31: 573-596. (Download)
Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Michela Musto (2015) “‘It’s dude time!’: A quarter century of excluding women’s sports in televised news and highlights shows.” Communication & Sport. (Download)
Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Robin Hextrum (2013) “Women play sports, but not on TV: A longitudinal study of televised news media,” Communication & Sport 1: 203-230. (Download)
Michael A. Messner (2013) “Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Men and Masculinities,” Communication & Sport 1: 113-124. (Download)
Faye Linda Wachs, Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner & Shari Lee Dworkin (2012) “Media frames and displacement of blame in the Don Imus/Rutgers University basketball team incident: Sincere fictions and frenetic inactivity,” Critical Studies in Media Communication. (Download)
Michael A. Messner & Cheryl Cooky (2010) Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlights Shows, 1989-2009. Los Angeles: USC Center for Feminist Research (Research Report). (Download)
Cheryl Cooky, Faye Linda Wachs, Michael A. Messner and Shari Lee Dworkin (2010) “It’s not about the game: Don Imus, racism and sexism in contemporary media” Sociology of Sport Journal 27: 139-159. (Download)
Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan & Nicole Willms (2006) “This Revolution is Not Being Televised.” Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social Worlds 5: 34-38. (Download)
Michael A. Messner & Jeffrey Montez de Oca (2005) “The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30: 1879-1909. (Download)
Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan & Cheryl Cooky (2003) “Silence, Sports Bras, and Wrestling Porn: The Treatment of Women in Televised Sports News and Highlights,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 27: 38-51. (Download)
Michael A. Messner, Michele Dunbar & Darnell Hunt 2000. “The Televised Sports Manhood Formula,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24: 380-394. (Download)
Michael A. Messner & William S. Solomon (1993) “Outside the Frame: Newspaper Coverage of the Sugar Ray Leonard Wife Abuse Story” Sociology of Sport Journal 10: 119-134. (Download)
Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan, & Kerry Jensen (1993) “Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports,” Gender & Society 7: 121-137. (Download)
