Beijing winter Olympic Games: female athletes’ representations in Italian newspaper coverage

ABSTRACT

Female athletes’ participation in the Olympic Games has increased over the years, however, they are still underrepresented or not covered in global media. Prior literature about gender studies and sport reveals that female athletes were often described through stereotypes, or other linguistic features minimizing their achievements, or focusing on their physical appearance rather than their sports abilities. The present study adopts textual analysis to examine how female athletes were represented during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games in two Italian leading newspapers. The findings show that there have been positive changes in the portrayal of women in sports, but this may be influenced by the increased nationalism during these mega events. The Italian media are more open to gender equality, and adopt different strategies to describe female athletes, nonetheless, some very limited negative cases are still found. The press tended to emphasize some main themes: female athletes as heroines of the nation, friendship, rivalries and conflicts, and athletes’ private lives. This demonstrates that the Italian newspapers are now more focused on non-sports related stories, to make the articles more interesting in terms of entertainment and emotional stories, to attract more readership.

KEYWORDS:

• Beijing 2022
• Olympic Games
• gender studies
• Italian media
• female athletes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editors and the anonymous peer reviewers for the thoughtful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valeria Minini

Valeria Minini is PhD student in the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on: gender studies, corporate communication, and cultural studies. E-mail: [email protected].

Yu Hu

Yu Hu is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University. His research interests include: journalism and communication theory, corporate communication, and cultural studies. E-mail: [email protected].