"Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender/race representation in NBC's coverage of the Olympics

For this assignment I decided to explore NBC's coverage of the the Winter Olympics in Sochi. I wanted to observe gender roles through a weeks worth of coverage. I looked at how gender represented the different sports in stereotypical ways. I also observed how the gender of the announcers were dependent on the sport.

After watching a week of NBC coverage I found many interesting and observations about how sports represent gender roles. One thing I noticed was that there were many more mens announcers, despite the equal distribution of women to men sports. For example the feminine sports such as figure skating had one female announcer and one male announcer. Figure skating is seen as a feminine sport so it makes since that there would be at least one female announcer. But for women's hockey there were two men announcers despite being a women's sport. This represents how hockey is a more masculine sport so there are usually male announcers. There were also two male anouncers for women's skiing, which is seen as a more physical sport. I also found that there were more female reporters than male reporters, regardless of the sport. Most of these female reporters were attractive and easy to look at. Because reporters are shown to the viewers, unlike announcers, most media industries try to hire attractive female reporters. This represents stereotypical gender roles where women do not usually give much of their own input about the sport, rather they just report the facts and look good for the camera.

The media coverage of the Olympics on NBC can have a big influence on gender roles because so many people watch the Olympics. I found that their coverage was very similar to the coverage you see on ESPN and most sports channels, so it did not present any new stereotypes.