Olympic women and the media

Pirkko Markula

This book examines how women athletes were represented in international media coverage during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Through feminist theorising and qualitative textual analysis, the contributions examine the type of media coverage women received in such culturally diverse places as Canada, United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, various countries in Europe, China and South Korea. The book serves as a comprehensive introduction to previous research on women's sport media, different feminist perspectives to media analysis and textual analysis as a method for media research on women and sport. The authors identify how media narratives shape an athletic feminine identity in the intersections of marketable 'sex-appeal', the search for national heroines, emotional displays of success and failure, portrayals of the athletes' personal lives as mothers, sisters or daughters and...