Abstract
M.A. (Design)
The purpose of this study is to conduct a critical comparative analysis of representations of women in South African television sports broadcasting. The research draws on the ideas of seminal feminist authors such as Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler and bell hooks, to critically examine the complexities of how television broadcasts represent sportswomen and female sports presenters. The analysis focuses on visual strategies such as camerawork and film speed, as well as the ideological inflections of a patriarchal postapartheid society in dialogue.
The first theme interrogates the camera’s gaze in the field of play. Here, the focus is on the manipulation of shot speed, shot framing and shot selection during the selected matches. The second theme of the analysis deals with absences in women’s sports broadcasting, which includes an analysis of the absence of female match commentators, experts and match officials, as well as the limited broadcasting time allocated to women’s sport and what these factors suggest about women in sports broadcasting. The third theme investigates the role of women in in-studio match analyses, in which two shows are critically analysed. The intention here is to interrogate how the camera frames female sports presenters, while comparing the role these women play and the degree of acknowledgement they receive during talk shows. The fourth and final theme focuses on commentating during women’s sports broadcasting, by engaging with commentating during a women’s rugby match.
The selected case studies include the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament (as broadcast by SABC 1, a South African Broadcasting Corporation channel), the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) World Rugby Women’s Sevens series (broadcast on SuperSport 5), and the in-studio rugby talk show, First Fifteen (FirstXV) (broadcast on SuperSport 1).
The research and findings do not seek to focus on why women are represented in a certain manner in South African television sports broadcasting. Rather, the primary aim here is to examine how these women are represented, and how such...