A Comparative Study of Media Exposure as Applied to the NBA and WNBA

This thesis examines the differences in how professional male and female athletes and teams are portrayed in the media. Specifically, I analyze the ways female professional athletes and teams are typically not marketed as elite and are usually portrayed as lesser than their male colleagues. Given the scholarly literature on the disparity between how male and female athletes are portrayed in sports media,, we might expect that news sources will diminish the accomplishments of female athletes through less coverage. Similarly, we might also expect that the themes covered in articles about female athletes and teams differ greatly from the themes that are covered with male athletes and teams. Through a quantitative analysis of media exposure and a qualitative analysis of radio articles from Arizona Sports 98.7FM from September of 2014, 2018, and 2020, we see that, while most news sources do write about female athletes and teams on a semi-regular basis, the themes explored do not always focus on the athletes but ten to emphasize their lives outside of the game. We are left with an understanding that female athletes and women’s professional sports teams are portrayed in a different light than male athletes and men’s professional sports teams. While female athletes are increasingly recognized in the media, men are still thought of as premier athletes while women are simply good among other women