Welcome!

Welcome!  We are four Virginia Tech communication majors.  We are writing this blog for our New Communication Technology class, where our group is focusing on men's and women's sports in today's media.  We will focus on college basketball and the differences in coverage over mediums such as social media, news outlets, mobile applications and television.  We will compile research from the past and present documenting the current state of college basketball in today's world of instant information thirst.

Some of our findings which will go into detail in later blog posts, will help advertising and marketing companies to focus their efforts to a specific target audience.  It is our hope that gender bias gap will be reduced not only in men's and women's basketball but, for all collegiate sports. 

We will examine past and current research to form our own content analysis based on gender bias.  The information we have found is coming through scholarly research articles, major world publications, other blogs, social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  A supplemental newsletter will be posted for your future reference about this topic. 

"Be positive and work hard.  I think it's possible to overcome anything, if you're willing to work at it" - Sheryl Swoopes, three-time WNBA MVP

"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be" - John Wooden. 

You May Like College Basketball, but Do You "Like" It on Facebook?

Facebook is becoming a different medium for fans to track their favorite college basketball programs.

Facebook Growth and Use

The story of Facebook is well-known. Mark Zuckerberg dreamed up the idea in his Harvard dorm room and has since turned it into a social media juggernaut. From their offices in Paulo Alto, CA, programmers for Facebook are constantly revising the site and adding new features for users. The number of users continues to grow as interest in the new capabilities of Facebook spread.

In 2010, Facebook surpassed 500 million users. Growing from the 1 million reported unique users in 2005(Clemmitt, 2010). Needless to say, Facebook is here to stay. The age demographic using social networking sites is changing too. According to research done by Mary Madden and Aaron Smith at the Pew Research Center, in 2010, 86% of young adults reported using social networking sites. These statistics are not as surprising as the figures related to the older demographic. According to the same research, the biggest growth occurred from 2009 to 2010 in users ages 56-64. Half of American Internet users in this demographic are using social networking sites, and a quarter of Americans over the age of 65 are using the sites.

Facebook is the dominate social networking website. Facebook has three times the amount of users as its closest competitor Twitter(Clemmitt, 2010). Therefore, Facebook is a viable option for people to follow their favorite basketball teams, communicate with other fans, and garner even more interactive collegiate basketball information than ever before. 

Ways People Can Use Facebook to Follow College Basketball

There are a number of ways people can follow their favorite college basketball teams on Facebook. The most prominent use is through “fan pages.” All types of businesses use these sites to attract followers to their product, disseminate promotional material, and help build product recognition. Essentially when athletic conferences or teams create fan pages, they provide constant news updates, videos, press releases, scores, pictures, and a forum for fans to either communicate with each other or show their support. People show their support by clicking the "Like" button on Facebook. The average Facebook user becomes a fan of four different pages a month(New Zealand Herald, 2010).  

There are other ways fans can interact with and follow college basketball on Facebook. Advertising companies are beginning to spend a great deal of money on Facebook ads. In 2010, Facebook believes it will generate more than $1.4 billion in ads(Clemmitt, 20101). Advertisements on Facebook can target consumers through their “favorite” things listed on their profiles. Therefore, these ads tend to, “make us buy thing we don’t realize we want(New Zealand Herald, 2010).” Another way college basketball information appears on Facebook is through different “groups.” The group is a similar idea to a fan page, but is not really as officially maintained as a fan page and is more of discussion forum for a particular event, rather than a consistent source of information no matter what time during the year. Groups are a way for supporters to come together for a certain cause or a way to share information quickly with one another and then delete the group.

Bias on Facebook

Before I began researching different fan pages and information on Facebook, I thought that all the information would be heavily weighted toward men’s college basketball. After doing several extensive searches for NCAA March Madness, Women’s College Basketball, Men’s College Basketball, and Final Four, my results revealed a much different reality. 

A search for NCAA March Madness showed a fan page for “NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness.” The page had 200,822 likes as of April 12^th, 2011 and was well kept with a great deal of activity on the page. I found a fan page titled, “NCAA Women’s Division 1 Basketball Tournament,” with only 29 likes and almost not activity. This search of the recent march tournament was proving my initial hypothesis true that information and coverage of college basketball would be more heavily favored toward men’s, but I decided to search further on the site. 

I tried a search for the main network that covered the basketball tournaments, CBS. I found the CBS College Sports Network Facebook page and it 9,831 likes. The site was more heavily favoring men’s sports. There were 13 videos on the page, and 5 of them pertained to men’s basketball and only 1 was about women’s basketball. As I continued searching Facebook I realized that by searching Women’s College Basketball and Men’s College Basketball, several different fan pages occurred from a variety of schools. Schools ranging from Division I, II, and III all had fan pages. In fact, women’s fan pages overall were much better maintained, had more recent activity, more information, and more likes than the men’s. The women’s pages used a variety of video to add to the news and many claimed that they were the “official page,” of the particular teams. The men’s had several different fan pages that were not well maintained and very few claimed that they were the “official page.” It seemed like this was one of the primary ways for some of the smaller schools to share news with their fans. For example, a search of “Women’s College Basketball,” returned a top hit to Loras Women’s College Basketball’s fan page. Loras is a small Division III college in Dubuque, Iowa. The page as 2,000 likes. There was no page for Loras men’s basketball. 

I decided to compare some of the schools with top men’s and women’s teams to see what kind of presence they had on Facebook. I compared teams from University of Connecticut, Notre Dame, Duke University, and University of Louisville. The results I found heavily favored women’s college basketball. The only official men’s page of these schools was Duke. The UConn women’s official page had 14, 323 likes and was well maintained. There was no official page for UConn Men’s. There was a men’s page for Notre Dame Men’s, but it did not say it was the official page and was not maintained well at all. The page did still have 2,633 likes on it. The Notre Dame women’s page had 1, 488 likes and was an official page with a significant amount of updates and discussion on it. Duke men’s and women’s pages both claimed to be official and were equally maintained containing constant updates and solid information. The women’s page had 2,447 likes, and the men’s had 19, 588. 

I then wanted to see what kind of coverage the Atlantic Coast Conference dedicated to both men’s and women’s basketball. I found a page dedicated to just women’s basketball in the ACC that was well maintained. I was not able to find a similar page dedicated just to men’s ACC college basketball. I did find the ACC fan page, this provided equal coverage to both men’s and women’s basketball, as well as the other collegiate sports in the conference. I found this site interesting and a compelling way to deliver information to fans who are interested in several different types of sports. 

Implications

My findings lead me to believe that there is a market on Facebook for fans to interact and gather information on their favorite teams. Right now, women’s teams have the most prominence on Facebook in regards to fan pages. If schools knew this, I feel like they would dedicate a lot of support to their women’s athletics fan pages because these are the pages people are going to. Also, if the men’s basketball teams put more energy into their official fan pages I believe they would gain thousands of followers, as seen on the Duke men’s basketball fan page. I also believe this information could be vital to advertisers, because people are actually viewing these pages on a daily basis and they could further narrow their ads to meeting certain niche areas. 

"Discipline is not a nasty word." - Pat Riley

"We do not win championships with girls. We win with competitors." - Pat Summitt

We're not the only ones talking about it

What Others are Saying

It has become evident to us, with even more research, that the men’s and women’s college basketball scene are those of two different worlds that receive two totally different rates of coverage and support.  We aren’t the only ones that noticed it either, because the topic was a popular blog post trend and letter-to-the-editor type response during the NCAA 2011 tournament.

Many other bloggers have noticed the difference between men’s and women’s college basketball, whether it’s the fan base, the media coverage, or the overall popularity of the sport.

Most of the blogs and responses we found for today’s post were about women’s college basketball, and how a select group of bloggers are seeing what we see as far as media and overall support.  Here’s what the people are saying:

The first blog we came across during research was written by a female blogger on her page “Not a Barbie Girl.” The title of her article was “I Don’t Watch Women’s College Basketball,” which gave her opinion about the sport.  Just as we’ve found in our research, this blogger noted, “the audience disparity for men’s and women’s college basketball is disappointing,” but then went on to say that she unfortunately contributed to this statistic because she didn’t watch women’s college basketball.  She mentions that the men’s league gets more attention, but makes a call for action at the end of her post for everyone to start supporting the women’s league.

Another post we found was again written by a female blogger on her page “Youth Noise,” in her post, “Women’s College Basketball, For the birds?” This blogger takes a stance supporting women’s college basketball, defending against those that complain about the sport.  She makes a few points, including if the viewer doesn’t like women’s basketball, they can change the channel, and to remember that the women’s teams generally play for the love of the game in their hearts, and not to impress a large audience.  She also took a stab at the “haters” (mostly males) and said they should stop complaining because they probably couldn’t even match skill levels with these young female ball players.  In the end, she also makes a call for action to recognize the trials and tribulations female athletes have endured, and for society to lessen the gap between support for men’s and women’s sports.

We then found a post written by a male blogger in “Jack’s Blog” post titled “The Good and Bad of Women’s College Basketball.” We noticed many of the blogs were written by females and the public feedback began looking skewed, until we found the men supporting women’s sports.  This blog post was in full support of women having the right to play and the need for more equality in college basketball.  He wrote that equality is the main thing that these women’s teams are looking for, and they deserve it.  It’s not about the men’s team versus the women’s team in any regards, but the need for women to be recognized just as well as men. 

The final blog post we found to stand out was written by another male in “MyFDL,” in his blog post, “Women’s College Basketball, Well Worth Watching.” This guy started out admitting that despite all his sports pals dismissing the idea of women’s basketball as a legitimate contender for time worth spent watching sports, he still supported the women’s teams.  He then mentioned that the 2011 NCAA championships were very opposite as far as quality of the game, and picked the women’s game over the men’s game for entertainment and interest.  He wasn’t afraid to admit that women’s sports can be just as, if not more, interesting and well played as men’s sports.  “If you enjoy both the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory that comes with sports, why not avail yourself to the whole spectrum of it, both men’s and women’s athletic competition? To do otherwise is to simply cheat yourself out of the thrills and excitement of athletic competition that women’s sports now provides on a level that is in many ways equal to and sometimes superior to that of men’s sports.”  

So there you have it.  The difference in support for women’s college basketball versus men’s college basketball is duly recognized by many people, and they’re speaking out about it.  The problem is known; we can now just hope to inform all the others that don’t recognize this need for equal coverage and support.

“Know yourself. Never forget where you came from,

and reach back to help someone else come forward too.” 

- Alpha Alexander, co-founder of the Black Women in Sports Foundation

“Never underestimate the heart of a champion.”- Rudy Tomjanovich