Marie Hardin, and associate director of Penn State's John Curley Center for Sports Journalism.
Similar women's and men's Olympic sports might look alike on television but how those competitions - and their competitors - are portrayed during broadcasts often differs significantly, according to a study by researchers at Penn State and Elizabethtown College. Researchers found women were often discussed positively as role models during the Olympics. At the same time, though, TV commentary often suggested that male competitions and participants paved the way for the women's success. "Culturally, men are seen as the standard-bearers in sports," said Marie Hardin, professor and associate director of Penn State's John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. "So, when women excel, they are often seen as aspirant to male athletes - even though they are achieving in their own games, in their own right." Results of the study by Hardin and Kelley Poniatowski, an assistant professor of communication at Elizabethtown College, were published this month in a special Olympic issue of Mass Communication and Society. The researchers analyzed the 2010 Winter Olympics and televised coverage of women's and men's hockey. Although the storyline of female participants as heroes was one of many that emerged, it often came with improper context - because outstanding competitors were compared to their male counterparts as though masculine performance in the standard to which women should aspire.
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