Medie-tacklingen af dansk kvindefodbold: Et empirisk casestudie af danske sportsmediers dækning af kvindefodbold

Football is the world’s biggest sport and a huge social phenomenon, which forms culture, communities and individuals. Or rather, men’s football. The cultural and commercial status of women’s football is far behind its masculine counterpart. In this context, the media is of great influence. Historically, the media has contributed to the lack of equality in football through a distinct favoritism of men's football and a simultaneous marginalization of women's football. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how three Danish sports media operating under different media mandates cover women’s football, and to examine media specific challenges and opportunities for women's football that emerge from the analysis. We investigate the topic from a macro level, such as culture and mediatization, to textual analysis on a micro level. Theoretically, we examine the topic from a media industry-, journalistic and gender and equality perspective. The methodological framework is based on a case study approach with a production analytical perspective. The research design is constructed as mixed methods, and we conduct information through quantitative and qualitative content analysis of journalistic articles and semistructured interviews with the media directors. We present our findings in separate case analyses followed by comparative analysis and discussion. The thesis finds that the media organizations’ journalistic practices and priorities are directed by the logic of their media mandates whether it is a non-commercial public service or commercial logic. They have different purposes for disseminating women’s football, but they compensate each other and contribute to the coverage in different ways and to different users in a diverse media landscape. The analyzes also show that the case media cover women's football through predominantly non-marginalizing discourses, sympathetic and source-based content - especially in the journalistically processed articles. This repres
Football is the world’s biggest sport and a huge social phenomenon, which forms culture, communities and individuals. Or rather, men’s football. The cultural and commercial status of women’s football is far behind its masculine counterpart. In this context, the media is of great influence. Historically, the media has contributed to the lack of equality in football through a distinct favoritism of men's football and a simultaneous marginalization of women's football. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how three Danish sports media operating under different media mandates cover women’s football, and to examine media specific challenges and opportunities for women's football that emerge from the analysis. We investigate the topic from a macro level, such as culture and mediatization, to textual analysis on a micro level. Theoretically, we examine the topic from a media industry-, journalistic and gender and equality perspective. The methodological framework is based on a case study approach with a production analytical perspective. The research design is constructed as mixed methods, and we conduct information through quantitative and qualitative content analysis of journalistic articles and semistructured interviews with the media directors. We present our findings in separate case analyses followed by comparative analysis and discussion. The thesis finds that the media organizations’ journalistic practices and priorities are directed by the logic of their media mandates whether it is a non-commercial public service or commercial logic. They have different purposes for disseminating women’s football, but they compensate each other and contribute to the coverage in different ways and to different users in a diverse media landscape. The analyzes also show that the case media cover women's football through predominantly non-marginalizing discourses, sympathetic and source-based content - especially in the journalistically processed articles. This repres