| Gender issues have not only been a sensitive topic on social media in recent years,but have also become a hot topic in academia of China.Feminists argue that women are treated unfairly in many professions,and that women have less of an advantage over men in terms of job search,career development and right pf speech based on biological differences and gender stereotypes.Traditionally,in the sporting arena where masculinity is the hegemony,female athletes are looked at differently because they do not fit the ’femininity’.In recent years,with the promotion of commercialism in women’s sport and the awakening of women’s self-consciousness,the status of female athletes has increased in terms of rising number of participants in international events,rising proportion of management in sports organizations,and gender equalization in participating sports.As an important bridge between major sports events and global audiences,the media plays the role of timely transmission of games,showing athletes’ performance in the field and spreading sports spirit,etc.The construction of female athletes’ image can also influence audiences’ perceptions of female athletes and even women,and thus promote or hinder gender equality in society.The study takes China Youth Daily as the research object,and selects female athletes’ reports in China Youth Daily from 2012 to 2021 as the research sample.Based on theories of journalism and communication,the study uses content analysis,discourse analysis and text analysis as the main research methods to summarize the characteristics of the image of female athletes in CYD,analyze the causes behind it,and reflect on the way of presentation.The author first browsed and summarized the articles of People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency in the past ten years to outline the changes in the image of female athletes in domestic mainstream media,in order to show the overall trend of the image of female athletes in mainstream media of China and provide reference for the summary and analysis of the image of female athletes in China Youth Daily.In the study of the coverage of female athletes in China Youth Daily,the basic overview of the coverage and the identity attributes of female athletes were quantified and analyzed as two parts.Firstly,three categories of coverage genre,newspaper layout and attitude were set to quantify and analyze the study sample（a total of 474 stories and paragraphs）,and then a general description of the identity attributes of female athletes in China Youth Daily was made by classifying the statistics of character form,family situation,public identity,private identity,external image and internal image.Using the discourse analysis method,the themes of the research sample were explored through word frequency analysis of the reports,and the typical images of female athletes in the sample were summarized:female sports groups in the national framework,female athletes who win in both family and career,mother athletes who are courageous in pursuing their dreams,young female athletes who balance their studies,elite female athletes with distinctive personalities,and young female athletes with entertaining spirit.Based on the content analysis,discourse analysis and textual analysis of the sample,the study uses the PEST theoretical framework to analyze the reasons behind the characteristics of the image of female athletes in China Youth Daily at three levels:political,cultural and economic.On the political level,China’s unique sports system and journalistic system make the presentation of sports groups such as women’s volleyball and women’s soccer show an obvious national framework,which is reflected in three aspects:the focus on reporting breakthrough achievements,sensationalized expressions of injuries and losses,and the war-discourse metaphor of the competition process.On the cultural level,gender stereotypes have to some extent restricted the presentation of female athletes in CYD,but at the same time,influenced by the wave of feminist movement in society,the image of female athletes in the newspaper has shown a tendency to focus on the presentation of athletic identity and a richer and livelier image.On the economic level,in recent years,influenced by the"HER ECONOMY" with the label of "independent women" created by consumerism,the image of a "heroine" who is financially independent,pursues self-fulfillment and has a distinct personality has become the ideal image pursued by feminists.Driven by the interaction between the economic environment and feminism,CYD’s presentation of female athletes has placed more emphasis on the display of personality and value in recent years.The deeper reason behind this is China’s growing economic power and rising international status.At the end of the study,the author summarizes the research and reflects on three aspects.The change in the presentation of the image of female athletes in CYD is moderate in the context of the increasingly heated debate on gender issues in social media.The way it chose to change the selection and description of facts,that is,to highlight more the female athletes’ identity as athletes and their rich characters,and how effective such a presentation will be in influencing the audience’s perception of female athletes needs to be followed up by subsequent research.Meanwhile,under the trend of media integration,traditional media should grasp the characteristics of audiences on different platforms and present gender issues in an appropriate and flexible way.Regarding the reflection on gender equality,the author believes that there is a paradox between feminism,sports and media.How the media presents female athletes in order to comply with gender equality should not just stop at some reported data,but should find the appropriate presentation in continuous practice and interaction with audiences.In addition,the gender inequality in the employment environment of the media field has to a certain extent hindered gender equality in news reporting,so it is imperative to improve the media employment environment so that women practitioners have an equal voice with men. |
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