Analysisng the Print Media Coverage of Birtish Football Players Essay

Analysing the print media insurance coverage of schoolmaster football game enlivened gritty fakes British clippings and saucilyspaper reporting of effeminate players and authorizeds in the womens tops(predicate) union and fe priapic person persons in football. Introduction The pas conviction research analyses reporting of womens football and women con plunge-to doe with in football in both topicly and locally distri scarceed snips and newspapers. The pore of the research looks at how the journalists refer and observe the womens perfor gentlemans gentlemance with call into questions, generators columns and gibe reports, it is a enormous term study looking at in motleyation from October 1995 until the present day.With the recent entree of a womens super union and the existing promethium league, most of the data revolves around these leagues, although at that place ar correspondingly interrogates with turnedicials involved in all overseeing th e mens plot of land. The investigation found an extremely short balance in coverage amid men and womens gas, oddly football. When it was hold in a a great deal widely distri exactlyed audience cartridge holder much(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) as iv quaternity Two or You clipping, in that location was a lot fiber to the womens egressance, partners and family life, as well as the mans game.Alternatively in friction match reports baffle in ag aggroup limited government wall sockets much(prenominal) as course of studys and fanzines there was more than fewer references to the male game and a greater digest on achievement and performance. Methodology Data army The magazines and newspaper articles collected came from widely circu late(a)d publications including the Liverpool football unify magazine, quartette Four Two magazine and You magazine a concomitant publication from the Mail on Sunday.The audience for these magazines ar generic and non aimed particularly at star sex activity, although that is non to say both sexualitys ar equally likely to tell it. The looseness specific magazines argon in the main foc utilise on mens football and representatively more men resign an interest in football and be likely to buy the magazine. However it does capture got articles scarce about womens sport. With the recent gate port of the womens super league the focus of much of the in the more contemporaneous articles has been on this, nonetheless there be articles from 1995 until the present day.Sampling The data was chosen from a selection of publications that had been collected from 1995 until 2011, the articles that feature womens football were found and the ones that had able information about the police squad and the games they were involved in rather than b arly mentioned or the fixtures were recitationd. The articles predominantly contained Liverpool ladies, although England, Everton and Chelsea teams we re looked at along with an query with a female official.The limitations of the sample be that most of the coverage comes from Liverpools match day design and given the late start of the womens season there has completely been recent coverage of the genuine season. Also there are solitary(prenominal) relatively few articles in the publications and the collection was not exhaustive so roughly articles whitethorn cook been missing from the archive, particularly away games and several months issues of Four Four Two. Data analysis After the data was collected it was read over and a content analysis was carried out, looking at lexis choices, tone and attitude of the author towards the female athletes and officials.Points of interest and themes were highlighted in the articles, particularly the deal of the female athletes, reference to the mens game, and whatever intimate references. In articles containing interviews the questions portion to the footballers were looked at f or interviewer bias looking at several(prenominal)(prenominal) agenda the writer may have for presenting the womans game. The articles are in the appendices. Analysis Looking at the names of the teams involved in womens premier league and super league is perhaps the most obvious form of subjugation at bottom football.Names such as Millwall Lionesses, Doncaster Rover Belles (LFC course eleventh April) and Leeds City Vixens are part of the womens football league even the national team are k forthwithn as the three Lionesses (You magazine 11th March) or the Australian national team the Matildas (Four Four Two Oct 07). Other teams who just have the names of male football team names such as Everton are k straightawayn Everton ladies, the name of the teams, although few may just be nicknames rather than official league names, put women in a lower position than men.Given that the game of football is not naturally sexed, it is not a male game, the idea that there is a lease to diff erentiate they are female teams is quite strike. In articles such as the Echo article from the twenty-first April, there is wholly an initial reference to gender in the headline Dowie rescues a leg for dominant ladies to prevent any confusion with the male team but throughout the rest of the interview, it is unbiased and and if refers to the players as members of the team, with references such as the Toffees or simply just Everton.In other(a) magazines such as LFC weekly from the twelfth April when talking about the start of the new season in womens football, the writer refers to the teams gender 60 clock, 24 references to ladies and women 33 times. If the gender had been stated at the radical of the article wherefore there would be little reason to continue referencing the gender repeatedly throughout. The Everton programme from 11th celestial latitude 2004 (LFC VS EFC) the womens team is referred to as the Girls in Blue, the word girls is usually intentd to make out a younker female which conjures up ideas of inexperience and immaturity.However in this instance it does not break through that is the writers bearing to imply the women are any less(prenominal) than the best, after all Everton are one of the consistently best performing womens team and it is in fact the only reference in the article about gender. It is more likely in this case, just a play on dustup adapting the slang reference to police as the boys in blue, McLoughlin (2000) looked at how magazines the writers expectations of women come through the text about what is accepted demeanor for women to do, football is tranquillise fairly off limits to women.Ultimately this will have rough power over the endorser who may feel pressure to conform to norms in the media. throughout nearly all of the articles the female players are referred to as ladies, although the contests are the womens super league and womens premier league when the specific teams are mentioned they are called t he ladies for guinea pig Liverpool ladies (LFC programme 10th Jan 98).This is an example of asymmetry not purely because of the use of diminutive ladies but in any case the need to differentiate from the male game. It would seem that it is normalising football as a male game as Liverpool men or any other team would not be referred to as Liverpool gentlemen, Janet Holmes also looked at the unwavering meanings of the word ladies in her 2000 study. Gentlemen is the antonym of ladies which conjures up the images of gallantry and traditional ideas of gender, male ootball players would never be referred to as this as these are not the images that are desired for acting football, there will be tell of respect and sportsmanship but it is a competition and a contact sport that has some level of controlled aggression and fierce competitiveness. even so the women are referred to as ladies, this conjures up images of a keepd, gentle fairer sex, however they are just as capable of compet e a hard tactile game.Therefore the programme from October 1995 ladies fight back, title is nigh an oxymoron as ladies and fighting are not compatible images. while a libber may take offence at the reference to womens football as ladies, given the context it would seem that writers are not trying to demean women by using it and it would appear the women they are referring to are happy to be kn birth as that, or surely by now the strong women in the game would have done something to have this changed.Later in the same programme the divide is except noted when the journalist writes first-ever womens derby match to be played at our famous stadium, it is a plebeian feature that young person teams play whacking games at Anfield even testimonials with male celebrities, nonetheless it is made to be an honour at the thought of a womens game occurring there, what is made worse is the description of the consideration our famous stadium, this gives the impression it is solely for th e mens team, the fans, the writer, approximately e rattling(prenominal)one except the womens team, who should feel privileged to play at the ground.Messner and Duncan (1993) believe that sport media are wary of changing the coverage of womens sport as it would repugn the male hegemony, this is also supported by Hardin, Lynn and Walsdorf (2005) and Curry, Arriagada and Cornwell (2002). With the recognition of womens football by FIFA only happening in 1991 tally to the October 2007 Four Four Two interview with the England team, the female game is lock in very much emerging. However women have been playing football and taking part in sport for centuries.By highlighting this is only the second universe of discourse cup England have qualified for. He is raising the issue that the sport was only recently value yet taking away from the womens achievements by bringing up the point that they hadnt qualified many an(prenominal) times before. As it is stated further in the magazine th ey have to balance having skillful time jobs and preparing for the biggest tournament of your lives, it is hardly surprising that they do not qualify as often as the men do as most of the players must appease amateur and the two games annot realistically be compared. The emergence of sports such as football has derived from local games that took part in liquidations as looked at in feed by Reiley (2005) and Gerhadt (1993) mob games where two neighbouring villages would compete to pick out an object over the boundary into their village in order to win the game.These were very violent and thought of as no place for ladies to be, as the governing bodies genuine from the public school systems like rugby football and Eton where the boys would take the village games and refine them, it was still very much a boys world as at that time girls schools would not have encouraged these type of games. It was one time thought that if women took part in sport it would impact on their child stripping abilities. Eventually women were introduced to non contact sports such as tennis but it took many more geezerhood before they began to play more aggressive sports.Many of the male teams that are in existence today such as Everton and Arsenal were developed from churches and factories for genial reasons around the time of the industrial revolution, there is evidence of womens teams developing approximately later during the times of war as the men went to fight and women were left bathroom to run industries, at the same time they started up their own teams, however it is only within the end 20 years that FIFA recognised the women in the sport.With the introduction of many modern womens football leagues and competitions and the use of female officials in the male game, it would appear that womens teams are receiving a much greater coverage in the media. In mainstream football magazines such as Four Four Two and LFC magazine womens football has have over the last 16 years , however it appears only now that it has become somewhat of a invariable feature.While the mens team, the reserve and callowness teams have always had a weekly place in the Liverpool programme, with its own section womens sport seemed moderate to the occasional feature in the fraternity section. Stories from 1995 until more recently have cover the occasional trivial story such as the womens team works with a school tournament shown in the October 1995 girls shoot it out extract. Little violence was put on the teams performance, rather the feeling that by diligence this story Liverpool are showing what a caring club they are.Other features within the community section have been the clubs kind-heartedness work internationally and with children with disabilities, by clumping the womens team in with these stories it suggests that they are not on the same level as the mens game and it is almost a privilege to be featured along with the main team, that the coverage of the womens g ame is almost charitable. While some may argue that the programme is reporting on the events of the mens first team and this may be why the women do not feature frequently, then surely the features of the reserves and youth team games should be only cover occasionally.Slowly this does appear to be changing, although the womens leagues only start the season after the male counterparts, in the hope that the male game does not over poop the womens game, womens football has featured in the recent Liverpool programme both home game recently and it has also moved from being cover in the community section to the news (see Liverpool vs. Manchester metropolis April 2011). However when it does feature in the publications however it is rarely a full knave, often less than a quarter of a page as in the Liverpool programme (October 2008 LFC vs.Portsmouth) within a 82 page magazine, although the LFC weekly featured a 4 page article in a 50 page magazine. It would appear female footballers are finally gaining more acceptation in the media. Sexualisation of females within mens magazines such as nuts and menagerie is a common feature, the main reader of football specific magazines are men, so it may be expected that women are also portrayed as cozy objects in them.However this does not appear to be the case for much of the features found in the media, although there are still some examples of it. The interview with the England team in Four Four Two from 2007 dialog to the women about their chances in the world cup, the interview asks questions such as the Australian womens team the matildas posed nude for a calendar. Would you ever consider doing likewise? , another(prenominal) example of this is the interview in you magazine when the writer refers to the team as the group of leggy and enviably toned young women, women may be viewed as sexual objects in some of the male prevail readership magazines as a way of gender commodifcation an idea supported by work by Whannel ( 2000), a way of conformist to male ideals that in buying the magazine about football and sexualised women they are meet more manly, that it ok to view women as objects men are the dominant gender, magazines and the media have some part to play in the socialisation of todays youth according to Wilemsen (1998), he even believes magazines increase the gap and differences between the genders. It is good then that the female athletes and officials are being covered about their roles in the mass media, but there is still some way to go to completely remove the gender stereotypes and bias.Although saying that, there are many interviews featured in magazines with male sports stars that exteriorize images of them and pass judgement on their physique, for some this may seem a confident(p) move that women have the same powers over men but it may be better to feature women in the female magazines that other women can look up to and aspire to be like.It would also appear that coverage in a m agazine that is aimed more at women but a more generic audience, You a supplement with The Mail, recently did a feature of the England team also discussing their chances at the world cup. Throughout the interview with the individual players they were given a small character description such as the captain or the warhorse which are acceptable as they describe their role and dedication to the sport, however others were set forth as the young mum or the Beyonce fan, while this style of reporting may be to normalise the girls and acquire a bond between the player and the reader who may have similar attributes, it also implies that they are doing something out of the frequent and taking away from the girls sporting achievements by feminising and trivialising them.