An analysis of sports programming sponsored by Children Now in 1999
found that male adolescents are five times more likely to view sports programs on a regular basis than female adolescents. Analysis of the representations of sports indicated the following themes:

• Aggression and violence among men is depicted as exciting and rewarding behavior.

• Sports coverage emphasizes the notion that violence is to be expected.
  

Fights, near-fights, threats of fights or other violent actions are found in sports coverage and often verbally framed in sarcastic language that suggests that this kind of action is acceptable. This message was found most frequently on SportsCenter (10 times), followed by the NFL games (7 times), Major League Baseball games (2 times), NBA games (2 times), and Extreme Sports (1 time).

• Athletes who are "playing with pain" or "giving up their body for the team" are often portrayed as heroes.

This "playing with pain" theme was most common in the NFL games (15 instances), followed by Extreme Sports (12 instances), SportsCenter (9 instances), and NBA games (6 instances).

• Commentators consistently use martial metaphors and language of war and weaponry to describe sports action.

On an average of nearly five times per hour of sports commentary, announcers describe action using terms such as "battle," "kill," "ammunition," "weapons," "professional sniper," "taking aim," "fighting," "shot in his arsenal," "reloading," "detonate," "squeezes the trigger," "exploded," "attack mode," "firing blanks," "blast," "explosion," "blitz," "point of attack," "lance through the heart," "gunning it," "battle lines are drawn," and "shotgun." These war references were used most often in NBA games (27 times), followed by NFL games (23 times), Wrestling (15 times), SportsCenter (9 times), Major League Baseball games (6 times), and Extreme Sports (3 times).

• Sports commentators continually depict and replay incidents of athletes taking big hits and engaging in reckless acts of speed and violent crashes.

• Games are often promoted by creating or inflating conflict between two star athletes.

Sports announcers often frame team games as individual one-on-one contests between two well-known individual players. This theme was particularly prominent in the NBA games, with 29 instances.

• Many sports programming commercials that boys watch play on male insecurities about being "man" enough.

• Traditionally masculine images of speed, danger, and aggression are often used in the sports programming commercials that boys watch.

This emphasis on physical display of male prowess is evident in the popularity of professional wrestling with adolescent males, as examined in the video, Wrestling with Manhood.

The highly gendered world of professional football is evident in the representation of female cheerleaders, for example, the following from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’s Homepage.

In the world of professional football, females are represented in terms of images of passive femininity and sexuality—images opposed to the high level of activity associated with the male players.

Men Can Stop Rape: explores alternative representations of masculinity

Module 5: Word document

What are Media Representations?

Why study Media Representations?

Studying Media Representations

Methods for Analyzing Media Representations

Representation and Censorship

Representations and Public Relations / Promotions

Studying Representations of Social Group

Representations of femininity

Masculinity

Masculinity and Sports

Gays/lesbians

Racial and ethic group representations

Class

Representations of Different Age Groups or Occupations

Occupations

Institutions

Instructional Activity

References

Teaching Activities