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Abstract
Past research of both private and public media has demonstrated that the coverage of women's sport is substantially less than that of men's. However, no research of media directly associated with intercollegiate athletics has examined the coverage of sports not considered to be "main" sports or to possess high brand equity. To fill this void, the present study examined the Internet coverage of university sponsored men's and women's tennis sites. The availability of information as well as the length of press releases were analyzed. Results indicate no differences in the presence of information between men 's and women's sites. However, the coverage of women's tennis was significantly longer than that of men's, signaling a stark change from previous findings. Implications and directions for future research are offered.
Since the advent of Title IX, several researchers in sport management and sociology have provided studies of and offered suggestions for the media coverage of women's sport (Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998; Jones, Murrell, & Jackson, 1999; Kane, 1988). This topic has evoked such interest because of the powerful influence the media have on the ideals and perceptions of the American public. As Kane (1988, pp. 88-89) suggests, "the mass media have become one of the most powerful institutional forces for shaping values and attitudes in modern culture." In a similar vein, many propose that when the media provide inequitable or stereotyped coverage of women and women's athletics, stakeholders of the sport and the public receive the message that women's sport is inconsequential or unimportant in some regard (Coakley, 1998; Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998). When women's sport is trivialized in this way (Sagas, Cunningham, Wigley, & Ashley, 2000; Theberge & Cronk, 1986), fewer women choose to participate in sport (Coakley, 1998); and our youth are not awarded the role models necessary for future sport enjoyment and empowerment (Rintala & Birell, 1984). Thus, the need to delve into matters of inequities in the coverage of women's sport remains paramount.
Studies of this sort can take place in two different contexts - private media or public media. Private media, for the purposes of this study, are privately owned media sources that, as a consequence of economic factors and the demand for revenue generation, must deliver and cater to...