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214 Sociology of Sport Journal, 2005, 22, 214-238 © 2005 Human Kinetics, Inc. I

214 Sociology of Sport Journal, 2005, 22, 214-238 © 2005 Human Kinetics, Inc. Intercollegiate Media Guides as Contested Terrain: A Longitudinal Analysis Mary Jo Kane and Jo Ann Buysse In the aftermath of the passage of Title IX, Michael Messner laid the theoretical groundwork for what was at stake as a result of this landmark legislation. He argued that women’s en- trance into sport marked a quest for equality and thus represented a challenge to male domi- nation. He further argued that media representations of athletic females were a powerful vehicle for subverting any counterhegemonic potential posed by sportswomen. Scholars should therefore examine “frameworks of meaning” linked to female athletes because they have become “contested terrain.” Our investigation addressed Messner’s concerns by examining the cultural narratives of intercollegiate media guides. We did so by analyzing longitudinal data from the early 1990s through the 2003–04 season. Findings revealed an unmistakable shift toward representations of women as serious athletes and a sharp decline in gender differences. Results are discussed against a backdrop of sport scholars in particular—and institutions of higher education in general—serving as agents of social change. Après le passage du « Title IX » aux États-Unis, Michael Messner a mis les assises théoriques pour analyser les enjeux de cette loi importante. Il a suggéré que la venue des femmes en sport a marqué la quête de l’égalité et, donc, a représenté une charge contre la domination masculine. Il a aussi suggéré que les représentations médiatiques des athlètes féminines étaient un moyen puissant de subvertir tout potentiel contre hégémonique des femmes athlètes. Les chercheurs et chercheures devaient dès lors examiner les « cadres de signification » reliés aux athlètes féminines parce que ces dernières étaient devenues un « terrain de débat ». Notre recherche porte sur les idées de Messner et plus particulièrement sur les récits culturels au sein des guides interuniversitaires à l’intention des médias. Nous avons analysé les données du début des années 1990 jusqu’à la saison 2003–04. Les résultats révèlent une forte tendance à mieux représenter les femmes comme athlètes sérieuses et un déclin marqué dans les différences homme/femme. Les résultats sont discutés à la lumière des chercheurs et chercheures ainsi que des institutions universitaires en tant qu’agents et agentes de changement social. Introduction and Literature Review In his classic 1988 article published 16 years after the passage of Title IX, Michael Messner laid the theoretical groundwork for what was at stake because of this landmark legislation. Arguing that Title IX created a legal basis from which females (and their advocates) could pursue equity in sport, Messner theorized that Kane is a professor and the director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, 203 Cooke Hall, Minne- apolis, MN. Buysse is the Director of the Sport Studies Program, School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Analysis of Media Guide Narratives 215 such a pursuit went far beyond legal proceedings: “Increasing female athleticism represents a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-definition, and as such represents a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination” (p. 197). Messner also detailed the various mechanisms that would resist any significant challenges by females to the established gender order. These mechanisms ranged from the structures, policies, and practices of organized com- petitive sports that advantage males, to the socially constructed meanings surround- ing physiological differences between the sexes, or the so-called “muscle gap.” A third mechanism of resistance, and one to which Messner gave great em- phasis, was the role of mass media. He argued that media representations of ath- letic females were a particularly powerful vehicle for subverting any counterhegemonic potential posed by sportswomen. As part of his analysis, Messner pointed out that cultural conceptions of femininity and sexuality do far more than describe aesthetic beauty. As he and numerous scholars have demonstrated, the media go well beyond a simple transmission of dominant ideologies (Birrell & McDonald, 2000; Kane, 1998; Sabo & Jansen, 1998; Wenner, 1998). They provide “frameworks of meaning” that shape, and in many cases create, attitudes and val- ues about women’s sports participation. Relying on this theoretical underpinning, Messner argued that because media narratives inform, legitimize, and naturalize unequal power relations between the sexes, it is essential to examine the various frameworks of meaning they employ to portray the emergence of sportswomen in the post-Title IX era. Such an approach enables us to investigate a central premise of Messner’s piece: First, that the female athlete—and her body—has become con- tested ideological terrain, and second, that a primary site in which this contest plays out is the vast sport media landscape. Since Messner’s critique, an impressive body of both theoretical and empiri- cal knowledge has been developed by sport media scholars. The basic premise of this research is that because mainstream media ignore, underreport, and denigrate women’s athletic achievements, they become an important technology for con- structing and maintaining dominant ideologies and power structures related to gen- der (Birrell & Theberge, 1994b; Davis, 1997; Iannotta & Kane, 2002). Scholars have made such claims because specific patterns of representation emerged within this literature. To begin with, there was overwhelming evidence that differential coverage was given to female and male athletes. This evidence was based on two consistent findings. First, even though there has been an enormous increase in participation for a wide variety of women across a broad array of activities, ath- letic females have been grossly underrepresented with respect to overall coverage (Eastman & Billings, 2000; Fink & Kensicki, 2002; Kane, 1996; Wann, Schrader, Allison, & McGeorge, 1998). A second pattern involved type of coverage: Male athletes were presented in an endless array of narratives that emphasized their athletic strength and competence, whereas females were presented in narratives that highlighted their physical attractiveness and heterosexuality (Burroughs, Ashburn, & Seebohm, 1995; Daddario, 1997; Kane & Lenskyj, 1998). In this lat- ter regard, females were significantly more likely than males to be portrayed off the court, out of uniform, and in passive and sexualized poses. An early and influential study by Margaret Carlisle Duncan (1990) offers a case in point. Duncan analyzed print media coverage surrounding the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games by employing a feminist critique of photographs as convey- ors of meaning. She discovered that notions of sexual difference were constructed 216 Kane and Buysse through photographic techniques such as an overemphasis on physical appear- ance, poses that bore a striking resemblance to soft pornography, and body posi- tions and camera angles that highlighted sexual submissiveness and smallness in stature. What this (and numerous other) investigations amply demonstrated was that media framings of the post-Title IX female play a fundamental role in the reproduction and preservation of gender relations that privilege males over fe- males (Birrell & McDonald, 2000; Daddario, 1998; Jamieson, 1998; Kane & Pearce, 2002; Kissling, 1999), and that sport remains a critical site where gender ideolo- gies are forged and contested. In spite of such consistent and unequivocal findings, scholars remain quite interested in the gendered aspects of sport media. Perhaps this is because, as Douglas Kellner (1995) has argued, media culture has become the primary cultural form that shapes our dominant worldviews. Kellner also delineates how mainstream media define a common culture, especially in relation to dimensions of power and control: Media stories and images provide the symbols, myths and resources which help constitute a common culture for the majority of individuals. . . . Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is al- lowed to exercise force . . . and who is not. (pp. 1–2) Sport sociologists are keenly aware that in U.S. culture, sports are “media spectacles” writ large, and that, by extension, media coverage of sport offers fer- tile ground for any investigation that explores images, symbols, and myths related to power. Thus, the ongoing interest in—and accumulation of knowledge about— sport media. In terms of the interest surrounding the gendered aspects of sport media, however, the focus of recent inquiries has shifted in that the central ques- tion of much of this research involves a change-over-time perspective. More spe- cifically, studies conducted during the past few years have two points of departure from earlier research. First, they examine whether differences in coverage given to female and male athletes remain just as dominant as in previous investigations, or second, they confine their analysis to women’s sports and ask whether there has been a shift in the type of coverage given to sportswomen. In short, these latter investigations seek to determine whether current reporting is more focused on women’s athleticism than on their “sex appeal.” Two studies outlined below serve as exemplars for these recent trends. Recent Trends in Sport Media Research Fink and Kensicki (2002) replicated previous media studies to determine “whether there had been any changes in the coverage of women’s athletics in Sports Illustrated’s historically male-centered magazine” (p. 317). Employing content analysis, the authors examined articles and uploads/Sports/ kane-and-buysse-2005.pdf