Rangel Mora 1

An Analysis of Instagram Posts and their Influence on Social Perception of Basketball

Leagues

Victoria Rangel Mora

Department of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Central Florida
ENC 1102
Ismael Benjelloun
April 09, 2024
Rangel Mora 2

Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
The Male-Dominated Sports Media Space:..........................................................................................3
The Portrayal of Female Athletes in Media:.........................................................................................4
National Basketball Association (NBA) & Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA):. . .5
Methodology...................................................................................................................................6
Results.............................................................................................................................................7
Discussion.......................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion......................................................................................................................................9

Figure 1: Pie Chart of Connotations of Male Comments...............................................................7

Figure 2: Pie Chart of Connotation of Female Comments.............................................................8

Table 1:Quantified data of types of hate present in comments........................................................8

Table 2: Central Theme of Posts after quantitative coding analysis...............................................8
Rangel Mora 3

Introduction
The sports industry has always been a powerful tool that has connected a large variety of
people from all over the world. As TV was developed it created a new sports broadcasting space.
In 1979, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) was born. They provide a
way for people to see the game from their own homes. Around the same time the male-
dominated space began to be slowly open it’s door for women sports. ESPN was broadcasting
many sports, but one of the biggest critiques was the lack of quality and quantity of female
representation. Further Kevin Hull noted, one of the reasons that women weren’t given equal
showing was because of time restraints that TV had (2016). As time passed a new way of
communication was born that would eliminate the time restraint.
As social media grew it provided a space where sports broadcasters could inform and
promote sports without the time restraint that television had. ESPN was one of the many
companies that shifted to this platform to continue to grow. Even though the time restraint was
eliminated through social media, scholars still found that male and female athletes were not
represented the same through social media. Is there a possibility that the differences between
ESPN’s representation of male and female basketball players throughout their Instagram
accounts have an impact on public perception of the professional basketball leagues? If so, could
this be impacting the success of each league?

Literature Review
The Male-Dominated Sports Media Space:
Social media has been proven to be an extremely powerful tool because of its ability to
promote sports quickly and cheaply to its respective fans. Although this is true, many scholars
looking at the sports media space have found problems within it (Adá-Lameiras & Rodríguez-
Castro 2023; Bernstein 2002; Billings & Young 2015; Coche & Tuggle 2023; Cooky et al. 2015;
Hull 2016; Litchfield & Osborne 2018; Sainz-de-Baranda et al. 2020; Salido-Fernandez &
Muñoz-Muñoz 2023). One of the issues that was most largely agreed upon was how sports media
is a space that is dominated by men. Scholars looked more into the lack of coverage of women’s
sports and they did this across many different types of media such a newspapers (Litchfield &
Osborne 2018), television (Billings & Young 2015; Cooky et al. 2015; Coche & Tuggle 2023),
social media like Twitter (Adá-Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro 2023; Hull 2016; Sainz-de-
Baranda 2020), and a combination of those previously stated (Bernstein 2002; Salido-Fernandez
& Muñoz-Muñoz). It is important to look at the different areas where male-dominance was seen.
Sainz-de-Baranda et al. explains that “It has likewise confirmed that the coverage given is biased
in maximizing the presence of “gender appropriate” sports” (p.10). This was not an uncommon
theme; this similar idea was found in other research papers (Bernstein 2002; Coche & Tuggle
2023). In contrast Sainz-de-Baranda found that soccer was making some improvements towards
equal coverage, but credited this to the level of popularity that the sport has within Spain (p. 8).
Many scholars have also noticed that the amount of coverage fluctuated, especially when the
Olympics rolled around (Adá-Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro 2023; Billings & Young 2015;
Coche & Tuggle 2023; Litchfield & Osborne 2018). The Olympics proved that they were a time
where women got significantly more coverage as compared to routine periods (Billings & Young
2015; Litchfield & Osborne 2018) and they were talked about in a more positive light (Adá-
Rangel Mora 4

Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro 2023). These kinds of claims of positive gains from women’s
sports in the media came with a variety of downsides. Litchfield & Osborne (2018) noted
“Although there are increases in print media coverage during the Olympic Games for women,
these increases are still a long way behind the coverage that men (and in some cases, animal
sports) are afforded,” (p. 52). On the contrary Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz found that “It
is confirmed that the dailies Marca.com and MundoDeportivo.com represented female basketball
players unequally as compared to their male counterparts in the coverage of the 2016 Olympic
Games,” (p.1735) demonstrating that perhaps things don’t really change during the Olympics.
When it comes to the coverage being male-dominated, many scholars found that another likely
issue was the lack of female reporters and female sources within the media (Coche & Tuggle
2023; Hull 2016; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz 2023). Finding that not only is there a
small percentage of female writers (Cooky et al. 2015; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz
2023), but that they are also less likely to write about women’s sports (Hull 2016). Additionally,
noting a lack of female coaches within the industry (Cooky et al. 2015). Through all these papers
the underlying notion is that the media continues to “focus on men’s sport and seemingly ignore
women’s athletics,” (Hull, 2016 p.487). Most of this research has been used to simply prove the
underrepresentation of women within various types of media. With this current research paper, I
want to combine this coverage with the portrayal/framing of these athletes to see how the
public/media shows us what they think about the professional basketball industry, since the fans
can tell us a lot about the current state of the basketball industry. Additionally, I intend to fill a
gap within the research. When it came to analyzing the coverage within social media, a vast
majority of articles used Twitter. In this current paper I am looking at Instagram accounts, which
vary slightly in the rules and procedures, since on Instagram a photo is necessary prior to
posting.
The Portrayal of Female Athletes in Media:
As mentioned above, scholars have found that women receive limited coverage, but when
looking further the type of content that they are putting out about women is troubling too (Adá-
Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro 2023; Bernstein 2002; Cooky et al. 2015; Garcia & Proffitt 2022;
Kavanagh et al. 2019; Litchfield & Osborne 2018; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz 2023).
This is not only from the news outlets/sports broadcasters themselves (Adá-Lameiras &
Rodríguez-Castro 2023; Bernstein 2002; Garcia & Proffitt 2022; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-
Muñoz 2023), but from the “fans” and what is written within the comment sections of these
medias (Bernstein 2002; Kavanagh et al. 2019). The categories that were most commonly found
within media were infantilization, gender marking, sexualization with heterosexual context
(Litchfield & Osborne 2018). An example of infantilization as shown by Litchfield & Osborne
would be referring to women as ‘girls’ or naming them by their first name (p. 51). Gender
marking is the addition of the word women or girls in front of an organization or using terms that
have gendered connotations (Litchfield & Osborne 2018; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz
2023). Sexualization with heterosexual context seemed to be the most prominent in research
papers which includes not just the sexualization of women, but also placing them in gendered
roles, such as emphasizing their motherhood and femininity (Kavanagh et al. 2019; Litchfield &
Osborne 2018; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz 2023). These kinds of topics have been
studied and analyzed for a long time, most notably Cooky et al. 25-year longitude study. Many
agree that there have been improvements, but at an underlying cost (Adá-Lameiras & Rodríguez-
Castro 2023; Cooky et al. 2015; Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz 2023). In the case Adá-
Rangel Mora 5

Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro (2023), they found that while this gender stereotyping for female
athletes themselves has gone down, it has shifted to the group of non-athlete females (p. 692).
Other studies had a different conclusion, that the obvious sexualization of female athletes has
gone down, but it has shifted into less noticeable to the femininity and heterosexual norms of
women, such as being a mother (Adá-Lameiras & Rodríguez-Castro 2023; Cooky et al. 2015).
Additionally, Bernstein (2002) found in two cases that women who were fitting into these
heterosexual roles generally got more media attention compared to the athletes actually dominant
within their sport. This kind of portrayal was not only something that was done by media outlets
themselves, but the so-called fans of these sports also contributed through media (Garcia &
Proffitt 2022; Kavanagh et al. 2019). Both of these papers found that social media became a
place where people threaten and harass women. Garcia & Proffitt explain “Social media become
spaces to reclaim that power through online violence against women who challenge Portnoy
(Barstool Owner), who in turn mobilizes the Stoolies (Barstool fans) to defend his position,” (p.
741). While these studies share the idea that violence through social media by fans does occur,
one focused on the hate that female broadcasters and workers of Barstool (Garcia & Proffitt
2022) and the other study focused on the top female tennis players (Kavanagh et al. 2019). The
Kavanagh et al. (2019) study did some more in-depth research on what kind of comments these
women were getting. They found most if it pertained sexual aspects, ranging from desire for
sexual acts to the threatening of sexual acts (p. 562). Similarly, Garcia & Proffitt (2022) found
hate that came from Portnoy or his Stoolie fans was consistent with the sexual appeal that female
reporters had (p. 736). All these papers together share the common theme that women are still
struggling to be portrayed in a respectful light. This idea is valuable in regard to the present
paper, because how media and fans talk about basketball players, teams, and leagues can tell us a
lot about the public success specific basketball industries have had. While it can also help answer
what kind of positions they are in today.
National Basketball Association (NBA) & Women’s National Basketball
Association (WNBA):
When conducting research within the basketball industry it is important to take a deeper
dive into the longest women’s basketball league, the WNBA and the oldest men's league, the
NBA (Agha & Berri 2023). These leagues share similarities such as being American professional
basketball leagues and sharing connections from a financial viewpoint. Although this is true, it
seems like they are not very comparable (Agha & Berri 2023; Berri et al. 2004; Walker et al.
2022). Notably, these leagues are at different times in their history with the NBA’s 8th season
being in 1953/54, while the WNBA’s 8th season was in 2004 (Agha & Berri, 2023 p.39). When
going in depth into the leagues during the same time frame, it was found that they aren’t
comparable, due to the differences in demand. While the old NBA and WNBA demand were
both driven by successes such as wins and lagged titles, the prevalence of star players only
played a role in the NBA (Agha & Berri, 2023 pp. 42-43). This is consistent with the finding of
Berri et al. (2004), which stated that “Although star power was found to be statistically
significant in this present study, the ability of a team to generate wins appears to be the engine
that drives consumer demand,” (p. 45). While it may not be the driving factor, it isn’t something
seen in the WNBA which saw lagged titles as the most important thing. The NBA and WNBA
also have different season times and rules. Simply put, these games are not the same (Agha &
Berri 2023). One of these differences, the presence of dunking, was looked at in some more
depth (Walker et al. 2022). It was found that dunks had no relevance to economic gains. Which
Rangel Mora 6

indicated that emotional support is a bigger factor. This emotional factor is created by time,
which both studies noted. This means that due to the time differences these leagues have, this
isn’t comparable (Agha & Berri 2023; Walker et al. 2022). Understanding these leagues is
important to present research because it shows us the factors that could play into the comparisons
made within this study. Certain factors such as emotional relationships have been further
developed in the NBA (Agha & Berri, 2023 p.42), which could have an impact on the results of
this study.

Methodology
To conduct the research, I collected Instagram posts and comments from 3 different
ESPN Instagram accounts. The three Instagram accounts that were selected were @ESPN,
@EPSNW, and @NBAONESPN. ESPN was selected because it would be the neutral account,
since it does not have a specific gender attached to it and it showcases many sports beyond
basketball. @NBAONESPN was selected because it is a page that specifically focuses on a
men’s professional basketball league, the NBA. Finally, @ESPNW was selected because it is the
closest page on ESPN that is dedicated to women’s basketball, since there is no ESPN account
directly linked to the NBA’s female league, the WNBA. To conduct this study, I have chosen
two one-day periods from last year's calendar with one being July 19th, 2023, and the second one
being February 24th, 2023. These times were selected due to 3 factors: each time represented the
same time in either the WNBA or NBA season. Both these times are right after each league's
respective All-Star game, both timeframes have games being played on the day, and each time
frame has one league in the offseason. The WNBA is in season during the July time frame, while
the NBA is in season during February time frame. I think that by choosing similar time periods
in the respective seasons it would allow for less biased results.
To analyze the data, I first went to each account and scrolled to the dates that I selected.
Any posts that were related to basketball at either the collegiate or professional level
(NBA/WNBA) were then recorded by URL and placed within a Google Sheets document for
organization. It is important to note that Instagram has a collaborative post feature that allows
two accounts to upload one post together. Any post like this was collected, and if the accounts
intertwined such as @ESPN and @ESPNW posting together the post URL was recorded under
both accounts because it was a post that both accounts felt represented their pages. Along with
the URL other data was collected: gender of post, the central theme of each post, and the
category of the hate comments that were collected. When defining top 5 comments this meant
the comments with the most likes. To ensure a more accurate collection of top 5 any replies to
comments and comments deemed to be from robotic accounts were excluded. For this research
robotic accounts were those that had comments asking you to click links or sexual messages, that
had no relevance to the post topic. The central theme of each post was collected, and it was
coded in five categories:
 Game Stats – player highlights/statistics/sport-related awards.
 Non-Game News (Players) – feuds/crowds/trades/injuries.
 Retro News – retired athletes/news on athlete’s past.
 Non-Athletic News – referees/coaching staff/non-athletic achievements
 Sports Analyst Quotes – sports analyst opinion on player/situation
Next to each category a summary of what was included in this category was listed. With this list
we were able to code each post into one category. Except for one @ESPNW post, which was
Rangel Mora 7

split into two categories. When coding them the post was split into 0.5 into the two categories it
represented.
After the Instagram posts were collected, the posts were separated by gender. Then from their
respective gender pools the numbers were converted into percentages and placed into tables.
Additionally, the comments were coded based on their connotations. This data had three
categories: positive, negative, and neutral. Positive comments were seen as comments that
praised athlete for skill or behavior. Negative were those comments that belittled an athlete in
any way. Neutral were those that did neither of the things defined in positive and negative
comments. Similarly, these were separated by gender and placed into 2 pie charts.
Lastly, the negative comments were looked at more deeply and organized into five categories
of hate which included:
 Physical Appearance
 Undeserving of Success
 Irrelevance
 Basketball Skill
 Player Behavior
This is the way that this data was collected, but it does have some limitations. Firstly, due
to the time frame of this research project I was only able to collect a small data size which may
not accurately represent the group. If given a larger time frame the sample would be bigger and
is more likely to have data that represents the situation better. Secondly, due to the large
difference between posts about women and men (10 female posts to 30 male posts) the
comparisons may not be as accurate as they could be if able to obtain a more equal pool of
posts.

Results
Figure 1 provides a make-up of comments within all the male posts analyzed. Figure 2
similarly does this for the female posts. For both genders neutral comments dominate the
comments section with at least 50% of the comments being neutral for both genders. For the
male comments there are more positive comments in comparison to negative comments with
there being 20 more positive comments than negative comments. For the female comments there
was also more positive comments with their being one more positive comment compared to the
negative comments.

Male Comments
35;
23% Positive
Negative
Neutral

105; 68%

15;
10%
Figure 1: Pie Chart of Connotations of Male Comments
Rangel Mora 8

Female Comments

Positive
13 Negative
26%
25 Neutral
50% 12
24%

Figure 2: Pie Chart of Connotation of Female Comments

From the numerical data collected through Table 1 compares the types of hate that men
and women are getting. For the male post almost all the hate comments they received addressed
their basketball skills or behavior. Only one comment was in a different category which was
irrelevance. On the flip side women had zero comments attacking their skill or behaviors. There
comments fell into three categories which are physical appearance, don’t deserve success, or
irrelevance.

Type of Hate Female Posts Male Posts

Physical 5 0
Appearance
Undeserving of 4 0
Success
Irrelevance 3 1
Basketball Skills 0 8
Player Behavior 0 6
Total 12 15
Table 1:Quantified data of types of hate present in comments.

The numerical date in Table 2 shows the different kinds of themes that were identified
within the genre of an ESPN Instagram post. The most common theme within both genders was
Non-Game Stats (Player) with each representing around 30% of the posts. Men were represented
in all five categories, while women were represented in four. Women had 0 posts when it came to
sports analyst quotes. The area with the biggest percentage difference was Non-Athletics where
women had 15.19% more post in this category. The category that was closest between the
genders was retro news which only had a 2.90% difference.
Game Non-Game Retro News Non-Athletic Sports Analyst
Stats Stats (Player) News Quote
Men (# of posts) 8 12 4 3 4
Women (# of posts) 3.5* 3 1 2.5* 0
Men % 25.81% 38.71% 12.90% 9.68% 12.90%
Women % 35% 30% 10% 25% 0%
Difference in % 9.19 8.71% 2.90% 15.19% 12.90%

Table 2: Central Theme of Posts after quantitative coding analysis

Rangel Mora 9

Discussion
The differences between the negative comments that male and female basketball players
get may suggest that not only female athletes but the women’s basketball industry is still
regarded differently compared to the male league. Salido-Fernandez & Muñoz-Muñoz noted
“Analysis of the news stories about the women’s and men’s basketball teams in the Spanish
digital daily newspapers Marca.com and MundoDeportivo.com, confirms the existence of an
unequal treatment in the representation of women and men,” (p.1733). While the articles are
within a different time frame, I similarly found there to be an imbalance within the male and
female basketball industry during a routine period of sport as they did during the Olympics.
Firstly, the proportion of hate that they get is different. After analyzing and sorting the
connotations of the top 5 comments from each post the men ended up with 15 negative
comments out of 155 comments while the women weren’t far behind with 12 negative
comments. The main difference being that only 50 comments were collected for the women. The
men’s pool was 3 times bigger than the women, but the number of hate comments is the same.
This may suggest that the women’s leagues and their players are not as respected in comparison
to the men’s league. This idea is only furthered when we look at the kinds of hate each gender is
getting.
Interestingly, the hate they are getting is not coming from the same place. Both genders
were hated within 5 main themes and men and women only shared one, which furthers the idea
that the hate they receive is different. The hate that women got attacked three main categories.
Firstly, they attacked the physical appearance of the athletes. This idea was found in other studies
(Kavanagh et al. 2018; Litchfield & Osborne 2015). Kavanagh et al. noted “Overwhelmingly,
most of the abuse targeting female players was ‘sexualized’ in nature,” (p. 568). In this study it
differed slightly because the comments weren’t sexualizing them, but they were attacking them
for not fitting the feminine and sexual nature that society expected from these women. A main
example of this is Brittany Greer who was twice claimed to look like NBA player Ben Simmons
in her post (found in Appendix A). The second kind of comments that were prevalent in the
women’s findings were ones deeming these athletes don’t deserve success, fame, and wealth that
they have today. This was not something that was talked about much in previous studies. It does
however show that the public isn’t accepting women entering a male dominated space like
basketball. One comment claimed that L.A Sparks were overpaying player Nneka Ogwumike
when they offered her a $165,000 deal (found in Appendix B) The men didn’t receive any
comments regarding their pay at all even though the NBA is far more advanced and financially
stronger (Agha & Berri 2023). The final category where women received hate was irrelevance,
comments came in just to say that they didn’t care about the content at all, in the cases within the
study it seemed like they didn’t care about this content because it was about a female basketball
player. Although, it was more prevalent with the female athletes this is the one category where
both men and women athletes received hate.
All the comments for women attacked them for things outside of their basketball skill. On
the contrary the men most of their hate comments came from their skill/behaviors (14/15
comments fit into these categories) as a basketball player. The hate that men were getting was not
something that was really talked about when it came to gendered research about sports social
media. The differences within the hate received suggest that public still views the women’s
league as inferior to men. When men get hate it is coming at them as athletes, by claiming that
the men are not good at their sport the public is considering them as basketball players, but
women got zero comments about their skill which may suggest that the public doesn’t quite view
Rangel Mora 10

them or their league as a space that has athletes. The hate they received came at them and
judging them as women or stating the level they play at is below the men’s league or irrelevant.
These comments show a direct opinion from the public on the basketball industry, but at the root
of these differences are the posts from ESPN.
The posts that ESPN is putting out for men and women also differs. The content that they
chose to highlight differs between the genders and may imply a difference with how the leagues
are perceived. When it came to the men, they received coverage across all categories which is
consistent with prior findings which suggest men’s basketball is part of the big three and receives
most diverse coverage. Cooky et al. defined the Big 3 as “men’s basketball (professional and
college), men’s football (professional and college), and men’s baseball (mostly professional),”
(p.269). Women on the other hand only were represented in four of the categories and didn’t
have a single post when it came to sports analyst quotes. This may suggest that women haven’t
gained enough support for not only the public, but even sports analyst to make content about
them. By ESPN opting to have their sports analyst to only speak about men’s basketball it may
suggest that the women’s game isn’t worthy of additionally coverage like this one. Even further
when basketball fans see that these content like this that doesn’t include women it sends a
message that they are not as important as the men’s game.

Conclusion
This may have been the findings of this study, but due to such a small sample the study
should be amplified to a much bigger sample and replicated. Even with the small sample size the
results found in this study did align with those from previous scholars in the field. All of them
identified that there was a difference within coverage that generally favored men. With this
knowledge in mind and the results of this study it suggests a course of action would be to show
women in more coverage that fits all categories like the men’s game. This would allow the public
to see them and make their game more visible. Even if emotional connection is a prime factor to
success by showcasing these women it may allow this bond to be formed faster and the women’s
league can make its way towards what the men’s league is today.
Rangel Mora 11

Appendix A: Instagram URLs

Rangel Mora 12

ESPN:
February 24th, 2023:
1. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu5qxXKgK02/
2. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu4lVuGOrwP/
July 19th, 2023:
1.
ESPNW:
February 24th, 2023:
July 19th, 2023:

NBAONESPN:
February 24th, 2023:
July 19th, 2023:
Rangel Mora 13

Appendix B: Instagram Comments