Get your head out of the game: framing of sportswomen and concussions

ABSTRACT

One of the major sports stories to garner headlines in the past few years has been the effects of concussions on football players. None has elicited more headlines than a Boston University study released in June 2017 that diagnosed 117 out of 202 former football players Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease which is caused by repeated head trauma and concussions. Recent studies, however, show that sportswomen may suffer from more concussions. In various longitudinal studies across multiple platforms, scholars have found that media coverage of sportswomen has declined. It stands to reason that reporting of health issues affecting them would mirror these results as well. This study employed a framing analysis of how many stories appeared in online national newspapers and sports sites about sportswomen and concussions in 2017 and after the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019. The lack of reporting demonstrates journalism’s continuing role in upholding a patriarchal system and perpetuating hegemonic masculinity in society.

KEYWORDS:

• Sportswomen
• concussion
• hegemonic masculinity
• framing
• soccer

Disclosure statement

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