| The purpose of this study was to utilize the critical paradigms of media studies to investigate how newspapers quantitatively and qualitatively portray female athletes and their own country's athletes through sports photographs. Selected photographs from USA Today and Korea Times during the '84 and '88 Summer Olympic Games were examined. Content analysis was conducted to ascertain the manifest representation of Olympic athletes by gender and by nationality, and interpretive textual analysis was done to explore the subtle ideological meanings represented through portrayals of athletes by gender.;The results show that: (1) Female athletes were at least fairly represented in newspaper photographs during the Olympic period in terms of number, size, vertical location, page locations, camera angles, and framing selection of photographs; (2) Female athletes in the so called "female sex-appropriate sports" were over-represented, as compared to their actual participation rates on the Olympic Games; (3) Despite the quantitatively 'fair' representation, unfair sexist treatment of female athletes still exists in newspaper photographs which depict female athletes as physically inferior, sexually thrilling and attractive, very emotional, and dependent and submissive, and in photograph captions which portray sex-stereotyped images of female athletes; (4) Foreign female athletes were under-represented in USA Today and over-represented in Korea Times in terms of number of photographs, but fairly represented in both newspapers in terms of size, vertical location, and page locations; (5) No specific difference between coverage pattern of USA Today and Korea Times was found except the devotion to their own country's athletes.;This study suggests that: (1) The athletes' sex does not seem to account for the amount and prominence of photographic coverage; (2) But media sport still reproduces and reinforces traditional attitudes toward women in sports; (3) While media coverage of Olympic athletes depends on their athletes' successful performance, the media reflects politics around the Olympic Games. |
