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. 

What are you Tweeting about?

What’s with the Twitter buzz?

Social Media is one of the fastest growing phenomena’s on the Internet.  Through web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, people have access to breaking news more quickly then ever.  Twitter has grown exponentially since its inception five years ago. 

Sports fans in particular have the opportunity to follow not only their favorite players and writers but, they have a chance to get involved in the process as well.  Through twitter, sports fans can tweet to their followers about anything they want.  The average fan has the chance to get involved, criticizing the way a player is playing or how a coach is coaching.  Through twitter, the fans can perhaps express something they wouldn’t normally say in person in an online community.  

How was social media used in the NCAA tournament?

In Early April, the men’s and women’s college basketball championships were played.  Before the championship tournaments started, a study was released by the IMRE Sports conducted by the Harris Interactive about how the American public would utilize Twitter during the men’s tournament.  The study revealed that nearly “one in four online American adults (23%) will be using some form of social media to follow the tournament.” (PR News Wire, 2010).  It was also revealed that those with higher incomes, which the study defined as $75K+ and college graduates would be more likely to use mobile applications and Twitter.

The study then broke down how people would use the social media site.  (PR News Wire, 2010)

• 62% will use social media channels specifically to check the scores
• 44% will use them to watch the games
• 44% will use them to follow their favorite team/college
• 40% will use them to follow their own bracket/other gaming purposes
• 19% will utilize social media channels to follow their favorite player/coach

What did we find out?

A week after the women’s championship game, we went on Twitter and searched specific topics catered to the championships.  The terms we searched were #MarchMadness, #NCAA, #NCAAM and #NCAAW.  Before starting the inventory of the terms we believed that there would be more tweets related to #MarchMadness and #NCAAM. 

When we searched for the subject #MarchMadness none of the tweets dealt with college basketball.  All of the tweets that mentioned #MarchMadness dealt with the NCAA hockey tournament that just wrapped up earlier.  So therefore, this topic does not apply to what we were looking at. When we searched #NCAA we had a very similar problem.  We had a sample of 100 tweets, the first 100 on the page and most were regarding football or the hockey championship.  Out of the 100 tweets only 13 were related to men’s or women’s college basketball.  From those 13, only 2 were related to women’s basketball. 

The only two terms left to search were #NCAAM and #NCAAW.  We specifically narrowed these two topics down because they usually relate to college basketball.  After completing the searches, the results were way different then what we were expecting.  One week after the conclusion of the college basketball season there were only 22 tweets that came up when searching for #NCAAM.  All of the tweets were from a broadcaster with the username of @WishFeeder.  When searching #NCAAW however, we found many more tweets.  There were 59 tweets about women’s college basketball. Like with the men’s search, most of the tweets came from a broadcaster with the user name of @hoopsfeed. 

So what does this mean?

Although we were surprised that the women were much more dominant with the social networking scene, we really shouldn’t have been.  As mentioned above, the two dominant tweets from both the #NCAAM and #NCAAW feeds were from broadcasters.  Through broadcasting, the writers can get their stories out and appeal to a mass audience that is interested in a particular topic.  Also, in an industry that is “dying” like the newspaper industry, most of the stuff that would normally have been in newspapers has moved online.  Through Twitter, writers can now “microblog” what they believe is important to his or her followers.  The trick is making sure the tweet stays under 140 characters. 

“Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one.” - Mike Krzyzewski

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" - John Wooden 

espnW: No Boys Allowed

So What is espnW?

In December of 2010, ESPN – the worldwide leader in sporting program -  introduced a new outlet to reach a targeted segmented: women.  The new website launched, espnW is a web site extension of  www.espn.com .  The format of the website is a blog with hopes that the web site will be “Dedicated to women’s sports that specifically caters to the female fans of those sports”.  (Media Strut, 2010) The company is hoping to eventually spread to the format of television, depending on how popular the blog becomes with its targeted audience.  The target audience for this new experiment is women between the ages of 18 and 24.  The blog currently has the capabilities to stream videos online and the ability to share certain content via mobile phones. 

Laura Gentile, the vice president of espnW has high hopes for the new sub brand for the company.  She believes that if the web site is able to appeal to the target audience that these women will become more engulfed in sports for years to come.  “The idea is potentially cultivating this fan base of women’s sports fans, where 10 years from now, girls are growing up truly feeling like ESPN is made for them and ESPN is truly their brand,” Gentile said in an interview with the New York Times. (Kim, 2010). 

Who are watching sports?

In a recent New York Times article, it was revealed that women “make up 44 percent of football fans, 45 percent of baseball fans and 36 percent of professional men’s basketball fans.” (Kim, 2010). The New York Times received this information the different sporting leagues like the NFL, MLB, and NBA.  Later on in the article it was revealed that women make up nearly a quarter of ESPN’s total viewership. 

While there is strong evidence that women are watching sports, they are not necessarily watching women’s sports, or not on ESPN at least.  In 2009, just 1.4 percent of the airtime on ESPN was devoted to women’s sports.  That is down from a decade earlier, when 2.2 percent of the airtime was devoted to women’s sports.  In 2010, just 8 percent of ESPN’s on air programming was spent on women’s sports.  (Kim, 2010)

What are others saying about espnW?

Since it’s debut five months ago, espn W has received mixed reviews.  Surprisingly though, most of the reviews have been negative.   One of the criticisms of the web site is how the company is trying to reach out to women.  EspnW claims that it is trying to reach out to women who are interested in sports and yet the brand tweets about clothing. (Example: Fancy Lulu! See you soon. RT @WhitBenj: Only a few more hours until the @espnW retreat! What's a girl to wear? Dress up my @lululemon?)

Another main criticism is that if women are true sports fans, they should not have a different form of espn specifically catered to their needs.  As one blogger wrote "Women already HAVE an ESPN. It's called ESPN." In other words, women who like sports can just watch sports—they don't need a special channel to feed them coverage or make sports more palatable.” (Dicaro).

It remains to be seen if espn W will survive and if they will keep the same format of regenerating stories that are appealing to female fans.  

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out." -John Wooden

"I'm strong, I'm tough, I still wear my eyeliner." - Lisa Leslie