Gender Issues In Hungarian Sport Media On Occasion Of The Olympic Games In Rio

The Games of the XXXI Olympiad were held in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016. The Hungarian Olympic Team consisting of 160 members comprised 96 men and 64 women, who returned with 8 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze medals. Out of the eight Olympic champions seven were women, which was an outstanding performance. This study presents the findings of a gender-focused extraordinary qualitative content analysis of the only Hungarian sports daily. The analysis looked at the content of tabloid style short articles (N=28) about Hungarian and non-Hungarian female Olympic athletes published during the time of the Rio Olympic Games with scrutiny. We were focusing on the following aspects concerning these articles that were dealing more with sensational topics than current sports results: • From what aspects related to sports or other things do journalists present athletes? • Do female athletes as subjects of articles appear in roles traditionally reserved for men? • To what extent and in what respect do articles about female athletes deal with the issues of gender identity and femininity? The results of this analysis did not support the previous empirical experience that women’s sport is presented as inferior and is therefore trivialised, and instead of performance the femininity and attractiveness of female athletes are in the focus of attention. Only the picture series depicting attractive female forms was an exception, the editors naturally wish to appeal to the mostly male readership.