Fandom, media and gender in Scotland's national game
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Strathclyde
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities and Social Science
Abstract
(summary from application: as this project is now in its second year, the focus has been refined in consultation with the industry partner and in light of developments in the women's game)
Fandom, Media and Gender in Scotland's "National" Game' investigates the representational and discursive framing of Scotland's men's and women's national teams as well as football fans' engagement with the national teams and players in both 'live' and 'mediated' contexts.
Within Media & Cultural Studies, there is considerable scholarship on media representations of sport that focuses on gender as well as scholarship on sports fandom, some of which is also centrally about gender. The great majority of this work in the UK context has tended to focus on women and men as fans of the men's game. Very little is known about what the audience and fan community of the women's game looks like, which means that sports clubs, organisations and
governing bodies tend to employ promotional and media strategies that were developed for men's sports - and nowhere is this more obvious than in relation to governing bodies of traditionally male-dominated sports such as football.
This project therefore investigates how the Scottish men's and women's national teams are promoted, represented and discursively framed as well the kind of fan engagement with the national teams and players this promotes and enables.
In relation to the women's game, the opportunities for live and mediated engagements are importantly different, as women's sports receive significantly less coverage in traditional media outlets. Recent UK research found that women's sport accounted for 7% of media coverage. Women fared slightly better on television (10%) than in the press (2%)
(http://www.womeninsport.org/system/1/assets/files/000/000/064/64/a9b842750/original/Say_Yes_To_Success_FINAL.pdf
?1414589558). In Scotland, men's football dominates mainstream sports coverage (Raymond Boyle & Richard Haynes 2009) but online media have provided spaces for sports that struggle to get mainstream exposure, including women's football. Social/digital media open up different opportunities for exposure and fan engagement, but there is no significant work to date that explores the experiences of fandom in this context and that leads to recommendations about more effective audience engagement and media and promotional strategies.
This project will identify existing promotional and audience engagement strategies, and examine fans as both audience members and as participants in media cultures through a series of focus groups. It will investigate patterns of engagement, motivations, pleasures and questions of community and identity. For the external partner, the SFA, this will offer crucial new knowledge, which will enable them to develop media and audience engagement strategies. In particular, it will provide an evidence base to allow the SFA to reflect on whether/how strategies for development need to be tailored for the women's game (the men's game is currently the operational norm). In academic terms, it will make important, timely and original contributions to knowledge around sports fandom, gender, digital media and participatory culture. In particular, it will bring together debates around media strategy and audience engagement. In the context of these debates, there is a real need for a more substantial understanding of how women's sports are represented and discursively framed within the contemporary media landscape and the very particular opportunities for audience and fan engagement this enables. This project also constitutes a much-needed challenge to the gendered assumptions underpinning existing writing on sports fandom, which tends to focus on men's sports.
Fandom, Media and Gender in Scotland's "National" Game' investigates the representational and discursive framing of Scotland's men's and women's national teams as well as football fans' engagement with the national teams and players in both 'live' and 'mediated' contexts.
Within Media & Cultural Studies, there is considerable scholarship on media representations of sport that focuses on gender as well as scholarship on sports fandom, some of which is also centrally about gender. The great majority of this work in the UK context has tended to focus on women and men as fans of the men's game. Very little is known about what the audience and fan community of the women's game looks like, which means that sports clubs, organisations and
governing bodies tend to employ promotional and media strategies that were developed for men's sports - and nowhere is this more obvious than in relation to governing bodies of traditionally male-dominated sports such as football.
This project therefore investigates how the Scottish men's and women's national teams are promoted, represented and discursively framed as well the kind of fan engagement with the national teams and players this promotes and enables.
In relation to the women's game, the opportunities for live and mediated engagements are importantly different, as women's sports receive significantly less coverage in traditional media outlets. Recent UK research found that women's sport accounted for 7% of media coverage. Women fared slightly better on television (10%) than in the press (2%)
(http://www.womeninsport.org/system/1/assets/files/000/000/064/64/a9b842750/original/Say_Yes_To_Success_FINAL.pdf
?1414589558). In Scotland, men's football dominates mainstream sports coverage (Raymond Boyle & Richard Haynes 2009) but online media have provided spaces for sports that struggle to get mainstream exposure, including women's football. Social/digital media open up different opportunities for exposure and fan engagement, but there is no significant work to date that explores the experiences of fandom in this context and that leads to recommendations about more effective audience engagement and media and promotional strategies.
This project will identify existing promotional and audience engagement strategies, and examine fans as both audience members and as participants in media cultures through a series of focus groups. It will investigate patterns of engagement, motivations, pleasures and questions of community and identity. For the external partner, the SFA, this will offer crucial new knowledge, which will enable them to develop media and audience engagement strategies. In particular, it will provide an evidence base to allow the SFA to reflect on whether/how strategies for development need to be tailored for the women's game (the men's game is currently the operational norm). In academic terms, it will make important, timely and original contributions to knowledge around sports fandom, gender, digital media and participatory culture. In particular, it will bring together debates around media strategy and audience engagement. In the context of these debates, there is a real need for a more substantial understanding of how women's sports are represented and discursively framed within the contemporary media landscape and the very particular opportunities for audience and fan engagement this enables. This project also constitutes a much-needed challenge to the gendered assumptions underpinning existing writing on sports fandom, which tends to focus on men's sports.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Karen Elizabeth Boyle (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Andrew Jenkin (Student) |