Old and New Forms of Racial Bias in Mediated Sports Commentary: The Case of the National Football League Draft

Abstract

Applying Social Identity Theory and Linguistic Intergroup Bias to the analysis of mediated sports commentary, this study examines racial bias surrounding the National Football League draft. A content analysis of 41 mock drafts—amounting to more than 1,300 descriptions of individual athletes—revealed significant differences in how commentators discussed White and non-White athletes. In particular, commentators more often described White athletes and in-group athletes in terms of mental traits, but described non-White athletes and out-group athletes in terms of physical traits. Additionally, in-group athletes were talked about in more abstract terms, consistent with Linguistic Intergroup Bias.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dana Mastro, Dale Kunkel, Jennifer Ervin, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

Notes

¹ There were two cases where commentator apparent race was not possible to determine (despite email contact), so those cases were not included among the 41 mock drafts analyzed.

² These modifications were as follows. First, positive consonance (e.g., “all of a sudden, she's firing on all cylinders”) and negative consonance (e.g., “not in his rhythm”) were deleted since those categories are designed for analysis of live commentary. Second, we collapsed intelligence/mental skill (e.g., “thinks on her feet”) and mental power (e.g., “toughness off the bench”) into one category called intelligence/mental skill or power. Pilot testing of the two original categories showed the distinction too difficult for coders to identify given this study's non-live context. Third, looks/appearance (e.g., “she's changed her hair style”) was replaced with physical description (e.g., “325 lbs.”)—a similar but more useful category for the less visually oriented context of mock drafts. Finally, we deleted the category of “background” (e.g., “has some off-field issues”) because it did not neatly align with either mental or physical description and was therefore not relevant to our hypotheses.

³ Two additional notes about the coding are necessary. First, there is no LCM code for physical description because this category captured reports of things such as height/weight. These simple descriptors did not lend themselves to LCM judgments. Second, three of the coding categories that appeared infrequently in the full dataset (leadership, determination, and team orientation) did not appear at all in the reliability sample. Consequently, the values among the two coders were invariant, making it impossible to calculate alpha. In those cases, the 1.0 indicates 100% raw agreement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Schmidt

Anthony Schmidt (M.A., University of Arizona) is an instructor of Communication at Edmonds Community College. His research interests include sports media and political discourse.

Kevin Coe

Kevin Coe (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is an assistant professor of Communication at the University of Utah. His research interests include political discourse, news media, and public opinion.