Media Representation Of Female Athletes’ Image During London Olympic Games

Under the long-time oppression of patriarchal domination, sport has been considered as a masculine domain in traditional society. This existing social ideology directly results in the limited development and secondary status of female athletes. Recently, the rise of feminism not only sheds light on the social theory, but further provides the in-depth explanation toward the multiplicity of social phenomenon and mass ideology. In order to investigate this problem, this study attempted to compare the news of2012Olympic Games from local newspapers in Mainland China, and further examined how female athletes and the existing gender ideology was represented and re-enforced through elite female athletes.Both content analyses and discourse analysis of news coverage of four main newspapers from201227th July to13th August are used in order to explore how commercialization and the high gendered discourse influence the presentation of female athletes.The content analysis found that the media construct the image of female athletes in the Olympic Games has a distinctive watershed, on the one hand, the female athletes have been given because of its excellent athletic ability take up the mission of building a national identity and the national spirit,"Mulan arena, tenacious and resilient spirit of sport and worked hard in the game’s performance is also a symbol of the mental outlook of the country behind it represents; On the other hand, when the return to situations outside the stadium, the media will immediately be given the highly gendered characteristics, showing the traditional female stereotypes. Discourse analysis found that the media in a male gaze women describe female athletes, women are still required to show their feminine image; mainstream social values makes the role of the female athletes for the impact of the role of women in the concept of implicit social expectations for family "," marriage "is still respected. During the Olympic Games, female athletes are models that encourage the whole nation appreciates their firm and unconquerable spirit even with the undesirable facilities. The representation of female athletes’ image is symbol in Chinese market-oriented reform which interlaces commercialization, gender and national identites, rather than the simply collection of women’s sports reports.