Examination on American Gay Male Athletes' Coming Out

EXAMINATION ON AMERICAN GAY MALE ATHLETES’ COMING OUT STORIES ON THE US MAJOR NEWSPAPER OUTLETS

LIN LEPENG

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

To my Mom and Dad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my committee chair, Dr. Trevor Bopp, for all of his support, patience, and guidance. I thank my committee members, Dr. Michael Sagas, Dr. Christine Wegner, and Dr. Wanta Wayne, for their suggestions and support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF TABLES ...... 6

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 7

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 8

ABSTRACT ...... 9

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 11

Statement of Problem ...... 17 Research Aims ...... 18

2 REVIEW OF PERTINENT LITERATURE ...... 20

Hegemonic Masculinity ...... 20 Framing Theory ...... 24 Framing of Gay Men in the US General Culture ...... 28 Media Portrayals of Gay Men Issues ...... 31 Media Portrayals of Gay Athletes ...... 33

3 METHODOLOGY ...... 39

Design and Procedure ...... 41 Data Collection ...... 39

4 RESULTS ...... 44

5 DISCUSSION ...... 55

6 CONCLUSION ...... 66

7 SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 70

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 72

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 78

LIST OF TABLES

Table page

4-1 Frequency of coming out stories and number of American gay male athletes that came out by time groups ...... 48

4-2 Means and standard deviation of word count by time groups ...... 49

4-3 Presence and percentage of themes by time groups ...... 50

4-4 Frequency and presence of framing tone valence by time groups ...... 52

4-5 Basic information under team and individual categories...... 53

4-6 Difference of frequency, word count, framing tone and theme under categories of team and individual...... 53

4-7 Basic information under contact and noncontact categories...... 54

4-8 Difference of frequency, word count, framing tone and theme under categories of contact and noncontact...... 54

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

4-1 Frequency of coming out stories and number of American gay male athletes that came out by time groups. Note: Total number of coming out stories N= 121; Total and number of American gay male athletes came out N= 51; ...... 48

4-2 Presence and percentage of themes by time groups. Note: 1. Factual, 2. Sexuality, 3.Skepticism, 4. Health Issues, 5. Tangible Business Aspects, 6. Legal Issues, 7. Optimism, 8. Competition, 9. Identity, 10. Social, 11. Political .. 51

4-3 Frequency and presence of framing tone valence by time groups ...... 52

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LGBTQ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer

MLB Major League Baseball

NBA National Basketball Association

NFL National Football League

NHL National Hockey League

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science

EXAMINATION ON AMERICAN GAY MALE ATHLETES’ COMING OUT STORIES ON THE US MAJOR NEWSPAPER OUTLETS

Lin Lepeng

August 2018

Chair: Trevor Bopp Major: Sport Management

This study sought to examine the representation and framing of American gay male athletes in the US major newspaper outlets online version. This study conducted an analysis from the standpoints of frequency of coming out stories, themes, word count and three dimensional framing tone (positive, neutral, negative). Several significant findings were yielded from this study. This research argued that frequency of coming out stories and themes are subjected to specific time periods, which have a close correlation with social background at the time. With the analysis under variable of sports categories (individual, team, contact and non-contact), there was a significant difference shown from the four analysis standpoints. Athletes from team sports and physical contact sports were more likely to receive coverage when they came out, whereas athletes doing individual sports and non-physical contact sports received less coverage when they announced their coming out. However, no significant difference was found in word count, themes and framing tone.

Overall, American gay male athletes enjoyed fair treatment in their coming out stories covered by major newspaper outlets in the US. Findings from this study confirmed previous literature findings showing that athletes who publicly announce their

sexuality were usually treated with biased and unfair treatment in their coming out stories back then.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Robbie Rogers, a former American professional soccer player, revealed that he was gay in 2013. Only a few months later, Jason Collins, a professional basketball player from the National Basketball Association, made national headlines with the revelation of his sexuality. In 2014, the National Football League defensive end Michael

Sam publicly came out as gay, receiving coverage from numerous media sources. It seems there was an imminent feeling that sports in America was finally ready to strike down its “bastion” against gay male athletes and welcome a wave of professional athletes to come forth with their sexuality. However, there was no wave and hardly even a trickle of athletes coming out in the wake of Collins, Sam and Rogers.

Throughout the history of the four most dominant professional men’s sport leagues in the United States, the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball (MLB), and Nation- al Hockey League (NHL), only a few athletes have revealed their sexual identity. This silence was initially broken in 1975 when Dave Kopay, a former NFL player revealed he was gay. Since 2012, there have been only six gay or bisexual athletes from any of one these four leagues coming forth with their sexuality (Kian & Vincent, 2014). One com- mon thing among these publicly-out athletes is that they all revealed their sexual orientation after the end of their careers. It was not until 2013 that an athlete publicly came out as gay during his active service in the four major leagues: Jason Collins is recognized as the first openly gay active athlete in any US-based professional team sport (Ki- an, Anderson, Vincent and Murray, 2015).

There is little presence of openly gay athletes in the arena of professional sports, especially male athletes (Hekma,1998; Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011). Although homo-

sexuality has received much more acceptance in many areas of society in recent years, the field of professional sports seems to be an exception (Butterworth, 2006; Nisbet and

Myers, 2012). Among every sport in the US, football has long been portrayed as the epitome of the most masculine of men’s team sports (Gross, 2012). In 2017, the NFL had 32 teams consisting of a total of 1,696 players. According to Jason Whitlock (2013), a national sport columnist and NFL reporter, 15% of NFL players are homosexual which is almost twice the number (8%) of US adult men who self-identify as gay (Kian, Ander- son, Vincent and Murray, 2015). However, there are only a few former NFL athletes who have come out.

Although there is no official documentation conducted on athletes’ sexuality nationwide, and there is no specific investigatory number targeted for US sports specifical- ly, it is safe to assume that the number of gay male athletes in sports should be repre- sentative of the number of nationally similar demographics surveyed. However, the current representation of openly gay men athletes in sports does not reflect the same picture painted by the Gallup figures and census numbers (Anderson, 2010), thus making the Gallup figures and census statistics somewhat meaningless when discussing sports.

There has been a huge discrepancy between the number of openly gay male athletes in

US sports and the number of openly gay male athletes suggested by national survey and statistics (Anderson, 2010). Not only is there little presence of openly gay male athletes in hyper-masculine sports such as NFL, but the representation of openly gay male athletes in sports overall is also abysmal. It has been recognized by studies (Messner,

1992; Walters, 2003; Nylund, 2004) that there has been an abnormal underrepresentation of openly gay male athletes in sports and it would seem there is a stark anti-gay

culture and homophobic sentiment responsible for the shortage of openly gay male athletes.

The formulation of hegemonic masculinity theory provides a plausible explana- tion for the phenomenon of underrepresentation of openly gay athletes. Research has suggested that sports have historically been utilized to sustain and promote traditional masculinity (Dworkin & Wachs, 1998; Anderson, 2002; Walters, 2003; Anderson, 2011).

The mechanism that sports use to accomplish the stratification of men and reproduction of homophobia was identified and theorized as hegemonic masculinity by Connell three decades ago (Carrigan, Connell & Lee, 1985). Hegemonic masculinity not only empha- sizes the gender-based differences between male and female—characterizing women as slow, fragile and biologically disadvantaged (Messner, 2013)—but also upholds the superiority of orthodox manhood which favors strength, muscle and heterosexuality

(Griffin, 1993).

Sports provide the most optimal platform for the practice of hegemonic masculinity (Messner, 2013). This is because sports were originally established with the political agenda of battling the supposed feminization of boys and the perceived threat of homosexuality (Anderson, 2002). The stereotype that gay men are weak, passive and not as masculine as heterosexual men is completely incompatible with the qualities that hegemonic masculinity advocates. Thus, the stigmatization of homosexuality and homophobic culture leave no space for gay male athletes in sports which subsequently places openly LGBTQ athletes at the bottom of this hierarchy.

Studies (Crosset, 1990; Anderson, 2002; Miller, 2011) suggest that when players reveal their homosexuality, it is usually accompanied by destructive consequences.

They typically face the potential end of their careers, fandom crisis, loss of sponsorship, termination of contracts and may even be driven off teams as a result of hostile treatment from teammates (Anderson, 2002; Nisbet and Myers, 2012). For example, although Michael Sam was drafted after revealing himself to be gay in 2014, his NFL career only lasted a year. He was cut without making an active NFL roster ever again. The nature of masculinity and homophobia is not exclusive to professional sports. This hostile sentiment toward gay male athletes at the professional level has seemingly trickled down to other sport institutions. Within intercollegiate athletics, for instance, recruiters may attempt to confirm athletes’ sexualities before recruiting them to their programs. In

2013, three college players (Nick Kasa of Colorado, Denard Robinson of Michigan and

Le'veon Bell of Michigan State) made discrimination claims resulting from interview questions they were asked during the pre-draft combine regarding their sexuality; all felt threatened with being unsigned/drafted if they were not heterosexual. The NFL Com- missioner, Roger Goodell, received a warning letter from the attorney general in New

York, stating that such behavior is unlawful and would face litigation charge considering more than 20 teams of the league subject to federal law based on their locations. Simi- lar homophobic discourse can be found at the high school level as well, where such language is used by students to create a hierarchy, or jock-ocracy, in which those with profound athletic abilities are able to marginalize other men and bully gay students (An- derson, 2002). Thus, the lack of openly gay male athletes is not an isolated case; it ex- ists at every level of the sport landscape. All of which contributes to the role of sport in silencing gay male athletes.

In recent years, the equal rights movement in the United States has achieved a series of symbolic successes along with the rapid changing of society. Unlike years ago, not only is same-sex marriage granted with legal warrant but homosexual lifestyles are generally accepted by a large number of U.S. citizens (Cillizza, 2013). More significant- ly, the acceptance levels for openly gay athletes among sports fans are rocketing.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents in a 2013 survey of US sport fans expressed that the sexuality of their favorite athlete would not negatively affect their fandom and team loyalty (Gold, 2013). Although these auspicious signs may suggest that the institution of men’s competitive and professional team sports have finally struck down its last barrier towards greater inclusiveness, that may not be the case in terms of representation of

LGBTQ athletes, or closeted athletes coming out in the future.

Studies (Shugart, 2003; Anderson, 2010; Gomillion & Giuliano, 2011) suggest that issues regarding LGBTQ acceptance have been evolving slowly within the U.S. sport arena. Scholars have agreed that competitive team sports have been used as a symbolic institution to uphold male physical superiority over women and subordinate men (Kimmel, 1990, Anderson, 2010). Additionally, when athletes maintain gendered identities that run counter to the traditional masculinity, they tend to be punished and cast aside.

Aside from the sport institution itself advocating orthodox masculinity and heterosexual privilege, scholars worldwide have made similar arguments that mass media regularly assist in preserving and reinforcing hegemonic masculinity (Kian, 2015). This is often achieved by granting abundantly masculine sports programs with flourishing coverage (Anderson, 2010). The four most dominant team-sports in the US, NFL, NBA,

MLB and NHL, are usually granted with fixed column inches in sports sections (Nisbet and Myers, 2012). Through media framing maneuvers, gay male athletes and athletes who publicly announce their sexuality are usually treated with biased and unfair narratives and reports. Since female athletes are usually marginalized in sports, female athletes do not necessarily receive fair treatment in the media (Herek, 2002). For female athletes, not only are their athletic accomplishments trivialized but they are also victims of sexual objectification (Duncan, 2006). Moreover, men‘s sports programs that require grace are construed as effeminate, and sports that do not reflect the orthodox masculine attributes such as figure skating and diving are usually marginalized in media representation (Duncan, 2006). Media have a long history of publishing news discourses and narratives to benefit heteronormativity and orthodox masculinity notions. While there has been an apparent shifting acceptance towards LGBTQ athletes in sports in recent years, some scholars have argued that the news narratives have not really challenged heterosexual privilege and rigid gendered identities, even if media reports may be framing stories in supportive terms and appear to be favorable to LGBTQ athletes (Hardin,

Kuehn, Jones, Genovese & Balaji, 2009). As society continues to make progress toward inclusiveness, the rise of LGBTQ visibility and acceptance toward gay athletes might have resulted in a shift in the narratives that media use to frame gay male athletes.

Conversely, the tone that media has adopted in terms of reporting of gay male athletes

(either in favor or negatively against) may also have influenced the overall attitudinal progression and inclusiveness towards LGBTQ athletes.

At the time of this writing, there are only a handful of gay male athletes with public announcements regarding their sexuality in the US (Shugart, 2003; Anderson, 2010).

The disproportionate number of openly gay male athletes from the four US major sports leagues in the coverage and representation suggests the cultural homophobia and heteronormativity policy may still run rampant not only within sports institution but also in the US media. This practice in the media industry is responsible for the biased and misleading news accounts and stories negatively affect gay male athletes who came out in the past and reinforce hegemonic genders notions (Shugart, 2003), and it may still be able to silence gay male athletes from coming out in the future.

In order to make this study focused and specific, the research subject in this study will only include gay male athletes from the US. The purpose of this study is to examine the gay male athletes’ coming out stories in the media with the intent of demonstrating how the sports world has potentially become more open toward Ameri- can gay male athletes. Therefore, to truly account for the status quo of American gay male athletes within the media, this study will utilize a comprehensive approach by in- cluding the first news reports on openly gay male athletes after their immediate coming out on major news outlets to examine their representation and framing in the US media.

Several research parameters (themes, coverage frequency and program difference) will be utilized to unearth in what ways American gay male athletes are being covered and framed by the newspaper media in the US and inferences will be made to make sense of the current situation and project into the future.

Statement of Problem

Historically, gay male issues are not favored in US sports and gay male athletes are marginalized and not being treated fairly (both inside and outside of sports) (Ander- son, 2010). Not only are gay male athletes being unprivileged in terms of their identity but also they are granted invisibility of representation and untoward coverage (Duncan,

2006). The media, on the other hand, have a great level of unwillingness and reluctance to involve gay male athletes onto their report agenda. As a powerful social institution, media play a big role in policing and advocating accepted social value and gendered principles. The representation of gay male athletes in the media is usually treated with negative framing and unfavorable tone. Therefore, both the underrepresentation of gay male athletes within sports as well as media and the biased and discriminatory treatment in the media, make it important to examine and understand the adverse situation that American gay male athletes are facing, and in what way this situation has potentially evolved. Because of what happened to the high-profile athletes back then trick- les down, or even worse, the lower name athletes or people wanting to get into sports, may get scared of getting into sports because they are gay. Due to the shortage of openly gay male athletes in the history and short time period, scholars were not able to study properly and sufficiently with an optimal time span (Kian, Anderson & Shipka,

2015). However, the increasing cases of gay male athletes coming out in recent decades and the perceived longer time span offers a unique opportunity to carry out a study in examining American gay male athletes’ representation in media.

Research Aims

This study examines gay male athletes under the combination of sport and media. The significance of this study is to obtain an understanding of how the American gay male athletes’ coming out stories have changed in US media and how the identity issues of athletes have potentially improved during the social evolvement. First, this study is going to unveil American gay male athletes’ representation status in their coming out stories in the media. Then the outcome of the study can also reflect whether there is a certain (positive, negative, neutral) coverage shift in US media towards the

underrepresented group of American gay male athletes. Next, through the coverage shift yielded from this study, it will provide a better understanding of what was American gay male athletes’ status in their coming out stories back then and how it has evolved until this day in a chronological manner. Also this trend could help scholars to see the direction this issue is heading in the future and observe the general direction of Ameri- can gay male athletes’ inclusiveness in both sports and media in the future.

From the standpoint of media, this study will demonstrate what role (for, against, neutral) the media have played regarding the coverage and framing of American gay male athletes in the overall movement of gay male athletes’ identification toward acceptance and inclusiveness as a whole. Furthermore, since media usually serve as a cultural indicator and social value institution, it is perceived as the major force of cultural shift. Thus, this study will provide result of in what manner and through what framing maneuvers that media have used to make a certain contribution to the overall cultural shift and therefore impact the inclusiveness and acceptance towards American gay male athletes.

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF PERTINENT LITERATURE

Hegemonic Masculinity

One of the most prominent theoretical tools for sports sociologists to understand why so few athletes choose to publicly reveal their sexuality has been the tenets of hegemonic masculinity theory. It has been utilized to help explain the mechanism and internal dynamics of masculinity in the sports sphere. Therefore, most of the previous studies devoted to media coverage of gay male athletes are examined through the lens of hegemonic masculinity (Cassidy, 2017).

Connell (2014, 2015) defines hegemonic masculinity as the configuration of gender practice that assures positional dominance of men who conform to accepted forms of masculinities and the subordination of women in society. Initially, it was developed to answer the question of how and why men maintain dominant social roles in society in the wake of feminism movement (Herek, 2002). However, hegemonic masculinity received criticism from many sociologists because it proposed as a fixed gender type which only includes male and female. Later, scholars argue that homosexuality is also incompatible with hegemonic masculinity. Therefore hegemonic masculinity is responsible for marginalizing gay men and stigmatizing homosexuality (McDonagh & Pappano,

2007). When applied into sports, Anderson (2010) noted that the ubiquitous nature of hegemonic masculinity was greatly assisted by the invention of sports. In fact, the landscape of homophobia in society as well as in sports would be impossible had sport not been promulgated by political agenda (Government using sports as a tool to stop boys from being feminine) (Anderson, 2010).The US society has had a sports’ obsession for decades. In the mid-19th- and early 20th-centuries, competitive men’s sports were par-

ticularly utilized and crafted from the governmental level as an antithesis to the alleged

“feminizing” of boys and as an opposing force to the perceived threat of homosexuality brought by the modern lifestyle during the time of the post Industrial Revolution (Mess- ner, 1992). Competitive sport has been exploited as a social institution, which helps to uphold certain forms of masculinity and denigrate other qualities and characteristics that contradict what it means to be a man (Crossett, 1990). Sports indoctrinate boys and men into complying with the embodiment and manifestation of hegemonic masculinity with regard to body images and identities building (Connell, 2005). Team sports therefore play a big role in conditioning boys to value and exhibit traits and quality that are favored by traditional masculinity, meanwhile in loathe of homosexuality.

The prevalence of homophobic attitudes closely associated with hegemonic masculinity is responsible for the stratification among males. This is largely because sports, particularly competitive sports with great violent intensity, provide the ideal venue for the reproduction and advocation of hegemonic masculinity. Athletes are expected to show macho qualities, and failure to exhibit these qualities or exhibition of opposing traits would be seen as feminine and/or gay (Connell, 2005). Femphobia therefore is also encompassed under homophobia which indicates that gay men/gay athletes who are usually deemed as queer and effeminate are greatly disliked within the sports world

(Anderson, 2010).

Cultural homophobia usually serves as a great barrier in the relationship between gay men and sports (Kian, Anderson & Shipka, 2015). However, there are signs showing that the level of cultural homophobia has lessened in recent years. In fact, since the early 1990s, both qualitative and quantitative studies have revealed that North American

and British society have experienced a noticeable decrease in cultural and institutional homophobia (Kian & Anderson, 2009). This is also in accordance with findings from the studies and surveys conducted among team sports athletes. It is uncertain, though, if those observations can also be seen as prominently in sports media coverage, considering sports media are mostly dominated by and operated for men (Hardin, 2015).

For instance, during a study interviewing twenty-six openly gay athletes in high school and collegiate sports teams, Anderson (2002) found that the coming-out experiences of those twenty-six athletes did not bring drudgeries into their lives. They were actually surprised by the inclusivity and acceptance from their teammates, and they expressed that their coming-out experiences were much more positive than they expected. Anderson conducted the same study about a decade later as a follow-up, finding that the same demographics from previous study received overwhelming acceptance from their mostly heterosexual teammates with even better experiences overall than in the aforementioned study (Anderson 2011).

Largely due to an absence of openly gay athletes in competitive sports and mediated sports worldwide, there has been a scarcity of published scholarship on athletes’ sexuality in sports media coverage (Lenskyj, 2013). The theoretical concepts of hegemonic masculinity have been used by many sports media researchers as a heuristic measurement to analyze disparate media coverage provided to women’s sports and female athletes compared to men’s sports and male athletes (Kian & Anderson, 2009).

Often overlooked in sports media research, however, is how competitive team sports reify masculinity as coexisting with heterosexuality among men and how this feminizes homosexual men (McCombs, 1972).

In order to fill this literature gap, studies have been conducted on the global media representation of men’s and women’s sports which, having revealed that print journalism and mass communication methods help reinforce a narrow, orthodox and biased doctrine of traditional masculinity and cultural homophobia. (Dworkin & Wachs,

1998). Homosexuality in sports was intentionally avoided by media professionals.

For example, an interview study was conducted by Kian, Anderson, Vincent and

Murray (2015) on sport journalists’ perception on gay men in sport and society and revealed that out of all the veteran journalists concluded in the study, they ironically have little experience of writing about gay male athletes in sports and have little knowledge of any gay colleagues in the news department. When it comes to a potential story about a high-profile athlete being gay, they expressed reluctance to pursue such a story, even if it means a rivalry news company could scoop them a story by hitting major headlines.

The authors suggested that hegemonic masculinity not only was abundant in sports itself but also perfused in news departments within media.

Reporters have been practicing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as a hidden rule toward the private lives of potential gay athletes, while serving up anecdotal and regular news articles of relationships of those male and female athletes known or recognized as heterosexual (Calhoun, LaVoi & Johnson, 2011). However, with regard to the narratives and reports of openly gay and lesbian athletes, recent studies have suggested that sports media are framing it in a positive manner while at the same time denouncing homophobia as improper bigotry (Kian & Anderson, 2009). Although heterosexuality is still hoisted as the standard and normality within the media agenda, the advent of social movement and prevalence of political correctness have posed as a great challenge to

the conventional, mainstream media framing of sport and sexuality (Hardin, Kuehn,

Jones, Genovese & Balaji, 2009; Kian & Vincent, 2014). Therefore, a chronological study on American gay male athletes’ representation in the US media is much needed.

Moreover, the situation that American gay male athletes encountered and the situation they are experiencing now deserves further attention.

Framing Theory

The scholarship on media framing and maneuvers regarding diverse narratives has been of interest to many scholars. Cohen (2015) theorized that journalists may fail to direct the public’s attention towards a certain topic, but they are extremely adequate in swinging people (audience) into believing specific ideas. Moreover, this practice was later advanced in the structure of agenda-setting (McCombs, 1972), meaning that the media uses its influence to sway popular opinion as to the importance of a coverage and weight placed on a certain fact or a story. Simply put, it is expected that the audience will perceive a certain news story based on the way media presents it. For instance, Wanta, Golan and Lee (2004) have employed agenda-setting theory combining content analysis and national polling to examine if the quantity of coverage on foreign nations is subject to the agenda-setting notion. In their study, they found that there is a positive correlation between the public perception and the magnitude report on given nation. The more news reports on a certain nation, the more likely the audiences perceive that nation as important to US interests. The adoption of such principles allows media framing to apply them to practical situations such as what is elicited, chosen, ac- centuated and included (Tankard, 2001), reporting from peculiar angles of narratives and choosing specific “ facets of perceived facts and making them more conspicuous

(Entman,1993).” Much of the attention and emphasis of extant studies on

team/competitive sport have been largely focused on how media framing is selectively exploited in the portrayal of groups based on issues such as sexuality (e.g.

Billings, Angelini, MacArthur, Bissell & Smith, 2014) or politics (Chong & Druckman,

2007). Under the same notion, Gamson (1989) pointed out that the interpretive com- mentary of media narratives is far more consequential than the informational text of news articles.

Therefore, it could be understood that how the US media write about and frame

American gay male athletes could greatly influence the public’s attitude and perception toward the gay male athletes. As suggested by Kian, Anderson and Shipka (2014), few studies have been conducted to discover the media framing of gay male athletes. The author believes that in order to understand how the representation of American gay male athletes in their coming out stories has potentially evolved in the US, it is critical to obtain a better comprehension of what framing maneuvers have been adopted by the

US media to cover such topic as gay male athletes.

There are various elements involved when it comes to how a specific topic is framed by journalists, especially with such controversial themes as gay male athletes and their outings. Circulation size, targeted subscribers, and newspapers’ long-standing traditions could all serve as factors to affect selective framing.

Devitt (2002) and Goffman (1974) argue that journalists enjoy relatively extensive freedom to write news and articles in the United States. However, topic selection, newsworthiness of stories to cover and directions, as well as opinions, are all subject to confirmation and permission from their bosses or editors above them. Topics and contents--particular sport media--are susceptible to rigorous scrutiny under their internal

system. In addition, previous research has found that there is a potential relationship existing between the framing of coverage and external factors along with mainstream social trends (Li &Liu, 2010).

To illustrate this point, one of the latest works from Kian (2015) comes to light.

Kian conducted a case study on media framing of gay male athletes and politically liberal websites, but his focus was mainly on examining the message-board of the website. Particularly, Kian examined MSNBC.com reports and articles on both Michael Sam and Jason Collins’s outings. The outcome of the study confirmed Laucella (2009)’s theory which proposes that public opinions toward events, groups, and individuals can be greatly affected by the ways that journalists–particularly sport media–cover or frame them. The study suggests that all the coverage relating to these two athletes was generally positive; however, a huge backlash with negative comments was generated in the message boards under these positively framed articles. Although, on the whole, message boards tend to be more negative or at least more mixed, plenty of homophobic terms are present throughout the boards. No research to date has offered an explana- tion for this eccentric phenomenon. Given this study was limited to one single website and the moderate popularity of these two players, findings in this study may not be generally valid. Therefore, the literature provides no clear models for this study of American gay male athletes and sports media. The author believes that when conducting studies on the representation on American gay male athletes, it is crucial to encompass gay male athletes from all the sports programs to make a holistic and accurate understanding of the current representation and framing issues of American gay male athletes in the media.

Similarly, Dworkin and Wachs (1998) had conducted a study involving the association of HIV and both cisgender and non-cisgender athletes in the media coverage.

They proposed a term in their study stating “un-discussed (assumed) inevitability of

HIV/AIDS for homosexual men (p. 6)”.This term reinforced their finding that HIV-positive heterosexual athletes with profoundly masculine sports were treated differently in media coverage. More extensive coverage is granted to HIV-positive athletes who play sports showing hyper-masculinity such as the NFL, NBA etc., whereas HIV-positive homosexual athletes with sports showing less masculinity such as diving, gymnastics and swim- ming were given less attention and usually presented as nonconformist due to their identity of being openly gay.

One prominent frame expressed by Dworkin and Wachs (1998) in the study was that there were nearly no expressions of shock or surprise when a homosexual athlete revealed his contraction of HIV. This was because there is a strong implication suggesting that homosexual athletes suffer an elevated susceptibility to HIV simply due to their lifestyle. However, HIV-positive heterosexual athletes were given credit for bringing awareness of HIV among heterosexuals and were treated with universal praise for their bravery in revealing their infection. The authors draw a conclusion indicating that ideo- logies which privilege heterosexual behavior are upheld in these sports media’s reproduction agenda (Dworkin & Wachs, 1998).

A similar conclusion was also found by Trujillo (1991), which involves a study on print and television coverage of Major League Baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan. Substantive media articles have placed attention on Ryan’s physical appearance. Interestingly, No- lan Ryan enjoys complete immunity from being questioned as homosexual, given that

numerous articles have directly focused on his physical attractiveness by using terms that are remote from masculinity. Trujillo further notes that the reason behind it is due to

Ryan’s sufficient masculinity asset. In other words, he is arguably the pronounced paradigm of hegemonic masculinity.

A study regarding athletes’ coming out with similar findings, Scheufele (1999) proposes that the public’s opinion and ideology are massively susceptible to media framing, particularly less informed demographics. Thus, Entman’s comments become especially meaningful when it comes to examining media framing of gay male athletes, as he states that the understanding of media framing can illuminate the forthcoming path of a mediated group and explain the influence on public consciousness exerted by frames (Entman, 1993).

D’Angelo and Kuypers (2010) noted that since US media are good at using specific framing techniques to swing the public’s perception and influence social trend, it is important to unearth the deep meaning and implication when conducting studies associated with US media. Kuypers (2010) also suggests that there is lack of conceptual analysis used in examination on LGBT issues within the US media. Therefore, the author believes that it is important for this study to discover the deep meaning with the coming out stories on American gay male athletes, such as theme exploration and framing tone.

Framing of Gay Men in the US General Culture

Until the 1940s, homosexual issues were seldom reported in the news media in the United States (Alwood, 1998; Bennett, 2000). According to Bennett (2000), the book

Kinsey Reports published in 1948, which focused on human sexual behavior, was con- sidered as the first instance that drew journalists’ attention to the subject of homosexu-

ality. Most articles about homosexual issues in the newspapers were reported as a social problem (Tankard, 2001). It was not until the 1960s that the constraints and limitations on reports on homosexuality in the journalism industry started to subside, accompanied by relatively open discussion in the news media (Walters, 2003). However, most of the portrayals and reports were negative and associated with crime stories, diseases and ridicule about effeminate men and masculine women (Miller, 1991; Streitmatter,

1999).

With the equal rights movement becoming more influential in the US society, the landscape of gay men in the general culture also comes to evolve. One of the earliest and most often cited works in this area is “Television and social controls,” a study conducted by Clark (1969), who proposed four stages of media representation for minority groups: non-representation, ridicule, regulation, and respect. Raley and Lucas (2006), in their prime-time television portrayals, indicated that coverage on homosexuals has passed the non-representation phase and has moved forward to the stage of ridicule while some are entering into the stage of regulation and respect.

Although the revealing of their sexuality and coming-out issues could still cause closeted gay athletes trouble, their plight has been greatly ameliorated by the flourishing recognition of gay man under the industry of US entertainment and showbiz culture

(Shugart, 2003). In recent years, gay men have been overwhelmingly featured in various multi-platform media venues and broadcast settings, and oftentimes they are showing up with positive images. Although some media feeds and broadcasting productions revolve around problematic and troublesome topics (e.g. AIDS, drug abuse, etc.), gay characters are inundated with positive associations and acclamatory labels. Films such

as Will & Grace (1998), The Normal Heart (2014) and Call Me by Your Name (2017) and popular American television series like Modern Family (since 2009) have contributed to establishing the positive and amicable image of homosexual men in modern culture and augmenting the visibility of homosexuality in a favorable way.

In addition, an increasing number of in-demand celebrities are coming out, such as Zachary Quinto (Lead actor for Star Trek: Into the Darkness) and Matt Bomer (television series The White Collar), singers Ricky Martin and Elton John, along with famous media reporters like CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper. One thing that must be no- ticed is that coming out (or sometimes rumors or suspicion) usually meant the end of careers for celebrities in the past (Kian, Anderson & Shipka, 2015), whereas gay male celebrities nowadays are receiving more inclusiveness from the mostly accepting Amer- ican audiences (Shugart, 2003).

Previously, the American media, movie and album recording industry were almost absolute “hetero” privileged, suggesting that homosexual conduct was aberrant since it did not comply with the long-standing heterosexual criterion (Duggan, 2002).

This stage of the situation prompted the exclusion of gay males in the media and entertainment industry except for those portrayals- usually of grievous or belittling features- that would be accepted by the “hetero” hegemony. The real crux of examination of gay males in contemporary culture is not just about the growing openly gay demographics but also the transition and extension from heteronormativity to homonormativity (Draper,

2012). Homonormativity welcomes gay perspectives, just as gay audiences are also treated with the same rules of heteronormativity. Some studies (e.g. Becker, 2006;

Chambers, 2009) have revealed that the US media and entertainment industry is

deemed as a terrace that introduces a challenge for the rigid assumptions about sexuality. It is sensational for numerous closeted gay males, particularly athletes, to receive support and recognition after coming out and this continuous progression of acceptance towards gay men visibility/exposure and themes set in television, media and album recording industry helps pave the way for those athletes coming out in the future.

Media Portrayals of Gay Men Issues

The significance of examining gay male athletes’ coming out announcement should not be severed from the larger background of gay men representations in media and popular culture (Moscowitz, 2013). Although it is not uncommon to have gay and lesbian figures either in media or US culture, Jason Collins’ sexuality announcement broke the silence and static climate of an American cultural/entertainment institution - sports, which has been reckoned as lethargic and reluctant in promoting inclusiveness and advocating acceptance of gay men and gay athletes. Not only did Collins’ revelation offer a background of unprecedented visibility for gay and lesbian athletes, but news media have also escalated the public discussion towards LGBTQ rights issues by granting passionate coverage and reports. A stack of academic studies over the past two decades have contended that gay male identity has walked out of the dark and invisible corner of media and stepped out into the sight of the masses. What is deemed as regular for gay men issues making the headlines nowadays would be completely expunged and rejected by printing media and magazines for more than a half century beforehand

(Gross, 2012). Although pathologizing homosexuality and denigrating gay male as per- verts and moral debauchers has been shaken off, this tenuous progress from invisibility to prominence was only a small step toward victory in terms of media representation.

With regard to the established mainstream social culture, there are several positive signs of conspicuous progress for equal rights in recent years, such as military service and marriage equality. The inclusiveness and acceptance toward gay men identities within today’s social mainstream can be credited to the burgeoning demand for gays and lesbians in entertainment industry and the perceived blooming LGBTQ consumption market (Phillips, 2012). Television shows/series with leading roles played by gay and lesbian actors greatly facilitate the exposure and visibility of the LGBTQ community. However, much of the cultural homophobia and heterosexual privilege remain unchallenged and contested. Despite the progress made in terms of exposure and portrayals, a growing line of work has argued that gay and lesbian identity possess potential commercial values. In other words, gay men identity has been exploited as a mar- keting tool in order to cater to the consumption taste of heterosexual audiences rather than combating the doctrine of heterosexist culture (Landau, 2009; Battles & Hilton-

Morrow, 2002). Interestingly however, only certain categories of gay men and lesbian women enjoy popularity within media consumerism, whereas this circumstance renders many other gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgendered people left out (Christian,

2010). Media have been objectifying gay men identity as financially abled, within privileged age, oftentimes male, physically aligned with orthodox concepts of masculinity, detached and dissociated from the larger LGBTQ community and politics, which further implies that gay men longing for fairness and work to combat heterosexual privilege remain unfulfilled in mainstream media representation (Draper, 2012).

Furthermore, Liebler, Schwartz & Harper (2009) expressed concerns in their study claiming that this budding visibility may come at a price; the current perceived op-

timism could be a curse in disguise—a misleading substitute for cultural acceptance and inclusiveness. It is obvious that there has been a strong culture tendency to appreciate the gay lifestyle but there is still stagnation in embracing the recognition of gay men identity (Walters, 2003). Recent scholarship on media reporting of gay issues has found that media is inclined to frame gay men issues in ways that comply with hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality while bolstering heteronormative privilege (Billings, Mos- cowitz& Brown-Devlin, 2015). This potential downside was also shared by Barnhurst’s analysis of LGBT community representation on National Public Radio (NPR). He argued that the normalization of gay men narratives and the tendency to coarsely blend LGBT sources into mainstream media made gay men issues even more vulnerable to hegemonic heterosexist institutions (Barnhurst, 2003). For example, although direct citations and quotes enjoyed copious appearance in news reports in the twentieth century, this also triggered a deluge of homophobic manifestation from antigay groups and print journalism (Moscowitz, 2013).

Media Portrayals of Gay Athletes

“Media as a cultural institution has a considerable impact on the shaping of gay and lesbian subjects” (Rowe, Markwell & Stevenson, 2006, p. 2). With the focused research attention drawn on gay male athletes, some scholars have reached a consensus that media dialogues have failed to sufficiently confront prevalence of heterosexual privilege and eliminate the trenchant homophobic culture that is deeply embedded in the sports/media arena (Anderson, 2011)

One of the earliest incidents involving gay professional athletes in US media history was sparked by the idiosyncratic media publications named Homosexuality in

Sports written by reporter Lynn Rosellini (1970). The allegations or assertions of homo-

sexuality made regarding some of the most prominent NFL players in her work had major repercussions. Outraged by the hateful and vitriolic sentiment and expression against LGBT athletes, retired National Football League (NFL) player David Kopay chose to make his coming-out announcement with the intention to confront the discriminatory culture and unfair treatment against athletes with different sexuality identities.

Followed by Kopay’s outing, Washington Redskins football player Jerry Smith is consid- ered another significant sports figure to publicly acknowledged that he was gay, but only after his death of AIDS in 1986 (through family members by will). The record-breaking

Olympic diver Greg Louganis was also forced to come out after being diagnosed with

AIDS which cost him the attainment of corporate sponsorships (Louganis & Marcus,

2006).The encumbrance of coming out and homophobic sentiment has long been institutionalized in the realm of mediated team and competitive sports, and the issues surrounding coming out continue to be contentious.

Although the gay civil rights movement has been receiving public recognition and achieved noticeable progress in the US at the turn of the twenty-first century, homophobia still prevails in team sports and institutionalized homophobia and antigay sentiment extends to the media complex. Not only have merely a handful of professional athletes disclosed their sexuality, but also the convolution of sports/athleticism and homosexuality makes this issue become extremely tricky. For instance, in 2002, American former

MLB catcher Mike Piazza had to organize a press conference just to openly affirm his heterosexuality in dealing with media suspicion about his sexual orientation. The ab- surdness of this event exemplifies the biased nature and dogmatic tenets when it comes to media narratives with regard to athletes’ sexuality issues. Study suggests that gay

male athletes tend to receive more coverage regarding sexuality revelation, whereas lesbian athletes are not necessarily granted with the same “exposure” in professional sports (Kane & Lenskyj, 1998), because lesbianism is often presumed in female athletes. Therefore, all the above-mentioned cases demonstrate how sports media continue to serve as an imperative stronghold for the surveillance of sustaining hegemonic heteronormativity and narrow sexuality notions while disparaging other sexuality identities.

In order to investigate ethnographic breakthroughs among openly gay athletes, studies involving profound interviews with gay male athletes (Anderson, 2011) and examination on participation and hosting of gay and lesbian events such as the Gay

Olympic Games were conducted (Rowe, Markwell & Stevenson, 2006). Other scholars took a different standpoint examining news message boards (Cleland, 2015), and how opinion and idea influencers such as media columnists and news reporters frame the sexuality announcements of professional team sports athletes. Overall, this line of research shows that there are latent occupational standards and unofficial rules being ex- ercised within the journalism industry that help reinforce heterosexual privilege and en- trench sexual boundaries. Media professionals are prone to portraying professional team sports athletes’ coming-out as a personal obstacle, and refuse to unfold the com- pulsory nature of heteronormativity and homophobia in sports.

For example, a textual analysis was conducted to examine John Amaechi’s public coming-out announcement. In their analysis, Kian and Anderson called it a “mixed blessing” in terms of athletes’ coming out through media (Kian & Anderson, 2009).

Sports journalists, on the one hand, reinforce the doctrine and norms of hegemonic

masculinity and the exclusive nature of the locker rooms alienating gay male athletes, while implicitly suggesting that sports do not keep pace with other social institutions on

LGBTQ issues. On the other hand, media columnists almost unanimously condemned homophobic remarks made by other figures. This is evident in the reaction to Tim Hard- away’s hateful and repulsive discourse against John Amaechi’s sexuality, in which most media outlets took larger column sizes and coverage to discredit and disapprove of the values and ideas expressed by Hardaway. However, calls for greater acceptance for gay male athletes in media outlets are still stagnant. In believing that homophobia is limited to the individual level, media outlets do not tend to associate the gay men issues with the questionable culture stemming from the sports institution (Nylund, 2004).

Hardin along with other scholars dubbed this specific phenomenon as neo- homophobia in the US media (Hardin, Kuehn, Jones, Genovese & Balaji, 2009). Not only do news narratives fail to put institutional homophobia in sports onto their agenda, but also oftentimes incorrectly misrepresent the sports field as impartial and democratic.

Media usually characterize sports as a civil rights battlefield that helps unite all walks of life in the US society and lead the way to greater inclusion. Consequently, the blind adu- lation and optimism toward sports has been utilized to divert the attention needed to solve and change the hostile climate faced by gay male athletes within sports.

The existence of several significant openly gay athletes and the over-optimistic media representation do not necessarily mark the termination of homophobia in sports, nor do they account for the impediments in mediated sports that stop gay male athletes from coming out. The increasing willingness to include gay male athletes’ coming out story in the news could be a result of circulation competition between rivalries with jour-

nalism. For instance, in a study on Jason Collins’s sex orientation disclosure, scholars have found that public disclosures of sexuality in the US professional sports are consid- ered as peculiar and newsworthy inside the news rooms. As Hardin noted, generally, these overly optimistic media narratives and the visibility of prominent gay athletes create a deceptive façade, and such a situation could be problematic in that they could potentially render a disservice to the overall progress of acceptance and inclusion (Hardin,

Kuehn, Jones, Genovese & Balaji, 2009).

The author of this study found that the extant literature have vague and ambivalent findings and arguments on studying gay male athletes within media. For example, in examining media framing of Jason Collins, scholars Kian, Anderson and Shipka drew the conclusion that “team sports and their locker rooms are ready for more openly gay athletes (Kian, Anderson, & Shipka, 2015)”. They indicated that gay male athletes are treated fairly by leading US media. However, Hardin, Kuehn, Jones, Genovese and

Balaji (2009) concluded with an argument in their study, which indicated that although media expressed supportive tones, the perceived progress and celebratory discourse are deceptive and could be dangerous.

The reason behind the ambiguous scholarly findings on the same research topic could be the inevitable limitation of a time gap. Social trends and people’s opinions towards sexual minorities are changing so quickly that any research findings and statistical implication will likely be antiquated by the time of publication (Hughson & Free,

2011). Another reason could be the one expressed by a majority of the scholarly works on gay male athletes representation in media, which is that since most of the works are only examining one single gay male athlete without taking into consideration various

variables such as sample size, different sports categories etc. their research results may be flimsy if generalized, and cannot account for the accurate and holistic picture on this issue. With consideration of the above-mentioned traps and problems, the following research questions were formulated to guide this study and thus to determine in what ways the gay male athletes are being covered and framed in their coming out stories in the US media and to further provide an accurate and holistic picture capturing this issue.

Research Question 1: Has there been a shift among US online news outlets in the frequency of stories covering the coming out of American gay male athletes?

Research Question 2: Has there been a shift in the number of words dedicated in the coming out stories of American gay male athletes?

Research Question 3: Has there been a shift in the frequency and presence of themes, per Lee, Kim & Love’s (2014) theme model, in the coming out stories of Ameri- can gay male athletes?

Research Question 4: Has there been a shift in the framing tone (i.e., positive, neutral or negative) of stories covering the coming out of American gay male athletes?

Research Question 5a: Is there a difference in the frequency, word count, themes and framing tone of the coming out stories of American gay male athletes in team vs. individual competitive sports?

Research Question 5b: Is there a difference in the frequency, word count, themes and framing tone of the coming out stories of American gay male athletes in contact vs. noncontact sports?

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

A content analysis (conceptual analysis) was utilized in this study to answer the research questions regarding the coming out stories and framing of American gay male athletes. This study involved systematic reading and observation of coming out stories on American gay male athletes which were assigned codes to indicate the presence of themes and three-dimensional valence (positive, neutral, negative). Content analysis was deemed sufficient to examine the framing and coverage, as well as impartiality and balance, of news stories regarding the coming out of gay male athletes (Fico & Cote,

1997). Content analysis is subjective and non-reactive, and is able to unveil both explicit and implicit implication within text (Anderson & Kian, 2012). Since media framing usually involves a series of processes (e.g. topic selection, organizing sources, exclusion, emphasis inclination) before a news narrative can be served up for public consumption

(Devitt, 2002), content analysis is the most appropriate methodology given its ability to examine all the aspects of a social narrative.

Data Collection

Prestigious websites of newspaper outlets were selected due to their substantial influence on the public (Stempel, 1961; Messner, 2013). A prestigious newspaper may even play a big role in affecting news agenda of other media. Another reason for the newspapers’ selection was that newspapers with huge circulation nationwide are less likely to produce biased coverage on controversial topics and events (Lacy, Fico, & Si- mon, 1991). In order to obtain the accurate and trustworthy representation of media narratives on gay male athletes, newspaper outlets with adequate prestige and respect were selected for retrieving sample news articles and reports (online versions). The top

ten US newspapers with the most daily circulation according to Statista- one of the world’s largest statistic portals—were utilized. Therefore only the news reports from the below-mentioned media outlets will be accepted. They are The New York Times, The

Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday,

USA today, New York Post, New York Daily News, Star Tribune. ESPN was also included as a supplemental source since it is a worldwide leading news outlet that is spe- cifically dedicated to sports. It has been observed that ESPN exerts an influence on the global sports media landscape (Miller & Shales, 2011). A list of American gay male athletes existing in US history was retrieved from Wikipedia. Each name on the list was confirmed with valid and reliable sources. They included news reports which are con- sidered major sources with credibility since news articles are usually required to go through legal scrutiny which makes news reports immune to charges of libel before publication (Devitt, 2002). Videos through Google searching regarding athletes’ public announcement were also used as evidence in confirming athletes’ sexuality. After the identity was confirmed, the immediate news articles published regarding the revelation of their sexualities were collected from the above-mentioned news media outlets’ online data archives through Google searching. The Lexis-Nexis database was utilized as an ancillary tool to collect news articles and reports on gay male athletes. As a database with sufficient academic credibility, the use of the Lexis-Nexis database to double-check assured the credibility and accuracy of data collection (Carnes, 1999). The keywords

“gay”, “coming out” and specific names of gay male athletes from the list were added to assist in searching for the news stories.

Design and Procedure

This study employed online newspaper articles via a content analysis in order to reveal trends, themes and framing. The online news articles were coded with different variables based on the article itself. They included, name of the subject in the articles, date of coming out, sports programs/categories (team sports, individual competitive sports, contact sports and non-contact sports), news publication date and word count.

The identification of contact and noncontact sports within the data pool was guided by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy statement 2008 version.

In addition, a theme model (Lee, Kim & Love, 2014) was imported into this research. The themes included in the theme model were Factual, Sexuality, Tangible

Business Aspects, Intangible Business Aspects, Legal Issues, Optimism, Competition,

Identity, Social, Political and Others. Since the theme model was drawn from a previous study with a different research object, the theme model was adjusted by removing unre- lated themes (Intangible Business Aspects and Others). The definition of each original theme was also customized to the fitness of this study. Theme Factual focused on personal and private life information, dates history and love relationships. Theme Sexuality focused on questioning of sexuality choice and the legitimacy of being unconventional.

Theme Skepticism focused on shunning and derision for being gay. Theme Health focused on being carriers of HIV and the association of other sexually transmitted diseases. Theme Tangible Business Aspects focused on the negative influence on career development, sponsorship and market image. Theme Legal focused on the equal rights discussion on a legal level such as marriage equality. Theme Optimism focused on social acceptance, positive image and identity celebration. Theme Competition focused on athletic records and achievement, as well as positive association between gay identity

and athleticism. Theme Identity focused on being role models and educational exem- plars for the younger generation. Theme Social focused on positive social trends and encompassed gay identity into the mainstream US social values and family values.

Theme Political focused on the citations of political figures and voices from the governmental level.

The author coded each news article with identified theme(s) according to the theme model. A three-dimensional (positive, neutral, negative) valence was incorpo- rated in the coding process. This coding process is inspired from Wanta, Golan and

Lee’s (2004) (positive, neutral, negative) valence which was used to determine the three-dimensions of news reports on foreign countries. According to the theme model, certain theme words are periodic (negative). If the article involved theme words under the category of periodic (e.g., health, skepticism, sexuality, etc.), the article was coded as negative. If the article involved theme words under the umbrella of thematic (e.g., competition, legal, social, etc.), the article would be coded as positive. If a news story involved both thematic and periodic theme words, the story would be coded as neutral.

Another independent coder was trained to code a randomly selected 10% of news stories from the data pool along with the author respectively, and the author coded the rest of the data pool after intercoder reliability was achieved. Intercoder reliability was checked using Cohen’s Kappa with an acceptable score of .91.

SPSS version 24 was utilized for data analysis. One thing to be noted is that for research questions with chronological analysis, the period (about fifty years) from when the first American gay male athlete came out on the list until the latest report of coming out stories was divided into six time periods (window) with the various years being

pooled in order to provide adequate means and standard deviations. The six time windows were pre-1970 (Time 1), 1971-1980 (Time 2), 1981-1990 (Time 3), 1991- 2000

(Time 4), 2001-2010 (Time 5), and 2011-2018 (Time 6).

For Research Question 1, a descriptive analysis was run to provide the number of American gay male athletes and the number of stories each time window. For Re- search Question 2, words in each news story were counted, and the mean word counts from all news stories of specific athletes were provided in each time period. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used as statistical test tool for Research Question 2 to see if there was a statistical significance existed between time windows in word count. For

Research Question 3, the frequency of theme(s) in each time frame was shown through descriptive analysis. For Research Question 4, the total number of three-dimensional valence in each time frame was provided through descriptive analysis. Research Ques- tions 5a and 5b were interpreted by analyzing the variables of frequency, word count, three-dimension valence and theme in mean and mode percentage. Independent T tests were used as statistical tools for word count between each category in Research

Question 5a and 5b to measure their statistical significance. A statistical analysis was not undertaken due to a lack of sufficient data for themes and framing tone (three- dimensional valence) in Research Question 3, 4 and 5.

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS

There were a total of 65 US openly gay athletes in this study. After the screening of the list through identity confirmation and sport programs (non-Olympic sports such as bodybuilding, motor racing are eliminated), there were a total of 51 athletes on the final list. There were a total of 121 newspaper articles collected in the data pool. The New

York Times (N =17), The Wall Street Journal (N =2), Washington Post (N =11), Chicago

Tribune (N =9), Los Angeles Times (N =10), Newsday (N =8), USA today (N =20), New

York Post (N =9), New York Daily News (N =15), Star Tribune (N =3) and ESPN (N

=17).Thirty athletes from list were granted with at least one newspaper report covering their coming out announcement from the targeted news outlets. Twenty-one athletes did not receive any coverage on their coming out announcement from the targeted news outlets.

Research Question 1 assessed if there had been a shift in the frequency of news reports covering the coming out of gay male athletes among US online news outlets. As displayed in Figure 4-1 and Table 4-1, findings demonstrated that there is an apparent ascending shift of frequency of news reports as time progresses, Pearson’s correlation r

= .213, p = .013. Results showed that there is significant correlation between time and frequency of coming out stories. There were zero news articles in Time 1and Time 2, although there were athletes coming out in both these two time windows. In Time 2, there were two American gay male athletes that came out during this period, and there was only one American gay male athlete that came out in Time 3. While there were only three coming out stories in Time 2, there were four American gay male athletes came out in this time period. It was not until Time 4 that it showed a trend of elevated news

articles lasting to this year, 2018. In Time 4, there were eight American gay male athletes that came out with a total of seven stories published. InTime 5, there were nine

American gay male athletes that came out with a total number of nine stories in this time period. In Time 6, there were twenty-seven American gay male athletes came out with a total of 102 coming out news stories generated.

Findings from Research Question 2 provided an opportunity to find out if different amount of words were used in covering coming out stories in different time periods. Re- sults from ANOVA revealed no significant differences between the six time windows under study F(3, 117) = 1.105, p > .05. The means of word counts between time groups were closely around a thousand words. In Time 1 and Time 3, there were no coming out stories, therefore, there was no available data for these two time windows. In Time

2, the mean word count was 802 with a standard deviation of 2.30. In Time 4, the mean word count was 948 with a standard deviation of 234. In Time 5, the mean word count was 885 with a standard deviation of 126. In Time 6, the mean word count was 1010 with a standard deviation of 291. Detailed numbers are shown in Table 4-2.

Findings in Figure 4-2 from Research Question 3 revealed that there has been a theme shift when it comes to coming out stories on American gay male athletes in different time groups. In Time 2, the theme Tangible Business Aspects took up the most percentage with 36.36%. Theme Factual and Theme Social followed as the second leading theme in this time window with a percentage of 27.27%. In Time 4, theme Iden- tity showed up as the number one theme with a percentage of 35.29% in this particular time window. In Time 5, the theme Optimism and the theme Social tied as the predomi- nant theme with a percentage of 28.57%. Theme Optimism 39.15% continues to leading

in percentage in Time 6. It is of interest to note that theme Legal Issues 12.14% and theme Identity 24.81% both took significant percentage in Time 6. Table 4-3 and Figure

4-2 illustrate the presence of each theme throughout the time windows.

For Research Question 4, Figure 4-3 and Table 4-4 show the distribution of coming out stories attribute in terms of positive, neutral or negative. Between 1971 and

1980, the framing tone in American gay male athletes’ coming out stories is unanimously neutral. However, more than half of the news stories were presented in a positive framing tone in Time 4, Time 5 and Time 6. In Time 4, six coming out stories were framed as positive and only one coming out story was framed as neutral. In Time 5, eight coming out stories were framed as positive and only one coming out story was framed as neutral. In Time 6, there were 80 coming out stories framed in positive tone and 22 coming out stories were framed as neutral. There were only a handful of news stories being framed in neutral, but positive framing tone served as the dominant one in the last three time windows. Results showed that there were no coming out stories framed in an absolute negative tone.

For Research Question 5a and 5b, results show that team and contact sports athletes received more coverage than athletes in individual and non-contact sports.

American gay male athletes (N= 29) in team sports were generally granted four coming out news stories whereas American gay male athletes (N= 22) in individual sports received only two coming out news stories. American gay male athletes (N= 25) compet- ing in contact sports were generally granted three. Twelve coming out news stories whereas American gay male athletes (N= 26) in non-contact sports received only 1.65 coming out news stories. There was also a difference under theme analysis. Team and

contact sports athletes were framed mostly with theme Identity, whereas, individual and non-contact sports athletes were framed mostly with theme Social. However, there is no difference found in word count between categories team and individual under independent T test. t (121) = 1.30, p = .194 and categories contact and non-contact. t (121)

= .041, p = .968. Also, there was no difference found in framing tone, because majority of the coming out stories were framed in a positive tone. The percentage of positive framing in coming out stories on American gay male athletes with team sport was

80.41% and the percentage of positive framing in coming out stories on American gay male athletes with individual sport was 66.66%. The percentage of positive framing in coming out stories on American gay male athletes with contact sports was 54.57% and the percentage of positive framing in coming out stories on American gay male athletes with individual sport was 72.34%. Positive framing tone was found in more than half of the total data pool under each category. Detailed data can be found in Table 4- 5, 6, 7

120 Frequency of stories Number of gay male athletes came out

0 Pre- 1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010 2011-2018

Figure 4-1. Frequency of coming out stories and number of American gay male athletes that came out by time groups. Note: Total number of coming out stories N= 121; Total and number of American gay male athletes came out N= 51; Pear- son’s correlation r = .213, p= .013

Table 4-1. Frequency of coming out stories and number of American gay male athletes that came out by time groups Time Pre- 1970 1971- 1981- 1991- 2001- 2011- Groups 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018 Number of 2 4 1 8 9 27 Outed Athletes Number of 0 3 0 7 9 102 Stories

Table 4-2. Means and standard deviation of word count by time groups Time Pre- 1970 1971- 1981- 1991- 2001- 2011- Groups 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018 Means of 0 802 0 948 885 1010 Word Count SD 0 2.30 0 234 126 291

Table 4-3. Presence and percentage of themes by time groups Pre- 1970 1971- 1981- 1991- 2001- 2011- Total (%) 1980(%) 1990(%) 2000(%) 2010(%) 2018(%) (N= 328) Factual 0 3(27.27) 0 2(11.76) 4(9.52) 14(5.43) 23(7.01) Sexuality 0 0 0 0 0 3(1.16) 3(0.91) Skepti- 1(0.30) 0 0 0 0 0 1(0.39) cism Tangible 21(6.40) Business 0 4(36.36) 0 0 1(2.38) 16(6.2) Aspects Legal 32(12.14 39(11.89 0 1(9.09) 0 1(5.88) 5(11.9) Issues ) ) Opti- 12(28.57 101(39.1 115(35.0 0 0 0 2(11.76) mism ) 5) 6) Competi- 16(4.88) 0 1(9.09) 0 2(11.76) 2(4.76) 11(4.26) tion Identity 64(24.81 79(24.09 0 1(9.09) 0 6(35.29) 8(19.05) ) ) Social 0 3(27.27) 0 4(23.53) 8(19.05) 8(3.10) 23(7.01) Political 0 0 0 0 2(4.76) 9(3.49) 11(3.35) Total 328 (N= 328) 0 11 0 17 42 258

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Pre- 1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010 2011-2018

1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Figure 4-2. Presence and percentage of themes by time groups. Note: 1. Factual, 2. Sexuality, 3.Skepticism, 4. Health Issues, 5. Tangible Business Aspects, 6. Legal Issues, 7. Optimism, 8. Competition, 9. Identity, 10. Social, 11. Political

1 1 22

3 6 8 74

0 0 Pre- 1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010 2011-2018

Positive Neutral Negative

Figure 4-3. Frequency and presence of framing tone valence by time groups

Table 4-4. Frequency and presence of framing tone valence by time groups Pre- 1971- 1981- 1991- 2001- 2011- 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018 Positive 0 0 0 6 8 80 Neutral 0 3 0 1 1 22 Negative 0 0 0 0 0 0

Table 4-5. Basic information under team and individual categories. Team Individual Total stories 97 24 Total Number of Athletes 29 22 Athletes with news reports 24 10 Athletes without news re- 5 12 ports

Table 4-6. Difference of frequency, word count, framing tone and theme under categories of team and individual. Team Individual

Frequency 4 per athlete 2 per athlete Word count Mean 1009.84 1009.14 Framing tone 80.41% positive 66.66% positive Theme Identity Social

Table 4-7. Basic information under contact and noncontact categories. Contact Noncontact Total stories 78 43 Total Number of Athletes 25 26 Athletes with news reports 20 12 Athletes without news re- 5 14 ports

Table 4-8. Difference of frequency, word count, framing tone and theme under categories of contact and noncontact. Contact Noncontact Frequency 3.12 per athlete 1.65 per athlete Word count Mean 965 1009 Framing tone 54.57% positive 72.34% positive Theme Identity Social

CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to examine the coverage shift of coming out news stories on American gay male athletes and reveal the American gay male athletes’ representation and framing through analyzing their coming out news stories on US mainstream newspaper outlets’ online versions. By examining the representation and status of news stories’ frequency, word count, theme, and framing tone, several meaningful findings were discovered from this study. Below is detailed discussion about each finding.

Data revealed that the amount of coming out news reports on American gay male athletes was subject to time. As time progressed, the number of coming out news reports on American gay male athletes covered by mainstream newspaper outlets also increased. However, there were two time windows, In Time 1 and Time 3, from the study that are completely void of coming out stories, even though there were gay male athletes that came out in both these two time periods. This finding confirmed the findings from previous studies that US society was more conservative back then. Until the

1940s, homosexual issues were seldom reported in the news media in the United

States (Alwood, 1996; Bennett, 1998). It wasn’t until the 1960s that the constraints and limitations on reports on homosexuality in the journalism industry started to subside, accompanied by relatively open discussion in the news media (Ragusa, 2005). In the

1980s and even long after that, the word “gay” was deemed as a taboo that had little chance of appearing in newspapers (Ragusa, 2005). The author postulated that this could be the major reason that why there were no coming out reports showing cases in

Time 1. Newspapers banned American male athletes from appearing in the coverage.

Also, one thing to be noted is that the Stonewall riot happened in 1969 which was viewed as a gay liberation movement, and this event marks the starting point of the fight for equal rights for the LGBT population in the United States. Homosexuality in the

1950s and 1960s actually faced an anti-gay legal system (Bernstein, 1997). Not only were American gay male athletes afraid of coming out, but also newspapers were reluctant to put stories of gay male athletes into their news agenda.

In Time 2, with influence of the gay rights movement from the previous decade, there are four athletes that came out in this ten-year period. Two of them are American football players (David Kopay, Jackie Walker) and an Olympic medalist (Tom Waddell) and a baseball player (Glenn Burke). However, there were only three stories generated in this time frame. It appears that at least there were athletes who were trying to stand up for seeking equal rights expression by making coming out announcements and newspaper outlets were taking small steps by giving little presence of American gay male athletes in their news coverage.

Time 3 is another period of time that does not have any coming out news reports.

There is only one American gay male that came out during that period of time, Dave

Pallone-a baseball player. The lack of presence of coming out stories from this time could be a result of the particular social background. The AIDS epidemic broke out in

1981 and gay men were associated with this disease. Before people got a good comprehension about this epidemic, gay men were blamed for the cause of this disease and it was referred to as "gay cancer” back in the time. Therefore, it could explain why there were no male athletes coming out in this period. American gay male athletes were probably afraid of making a coming out announcement because they were afraid of be-

ing stigmatized and blamed as disease carrier just as previous literature suggested that gay men were usually associated with diseases and crimes (Miller, 1991; Streitmatter,

1999). Newspapers, on the other hand, might have had to seriously consider whether putting a gay male athletes’ coming out story onto the news agenda as it might contradict the social sentiment of the time, which was unfriendly towards homosexuality.

Beginning in Time 4, the data shows a consecutive increase in the frequency of coming out stories. As a literature review suggests, the acceptance toward homosexuality is greatly augmented in the US in recent decades. From the cultural aspect, gay men have been constantly featured in entertainment and pop culture. An increasing number of popular celebrities coming out greatly helped improve the identity recognition about gay men. Let alone with the passing of legal warrant for military service and marriage equality in 2011 and 2015, respectively. Most of the coming out stories clustered in

Time 6, which explains the increasing number of American gay male athletes that chose to come out during this time and the increasing number of coming out stories granted by newspaper outlets.

As described earlier in the literature, hegemonic masculinity discourages being gay men (Anderson, 2002), and since sports offer a perfect venue for the practice of hegemonic masculinity (Messner, 2013), American gay male athletes chose to hide their homosexual identity in fear of serious consequences either in their personal life or their athletic careers (Miller, 2011). However, the results from this study offered an up- date to the previous situation. It can be argued that in recent decades, the stress of hegemonic masculinity was greatly lessened in sports and newspaper media. Not only were American gay male athletes more comfortable to reveal their sexuality, but also

major newspapers were more willing to put coming out stories on American gay male athletes in their news agenda.

Results from this study showed that there is no significant difference found in word count between the six time periods. Overall, the mean word count in the coming out stories collected was consistent.

Previous literature suggested that the potential answer could be that newspapers usually have predetermined column inches and fixed layout design (Nisbet and Myers,

2012). Journalists have to adjust the length of each coming out story based on the assigned space in newspapers. This finding suggests that word count was not a framing maneuver adopted by major newspapers in writing American gay male athletes’ coming out stories.

The findings revealed that there was a significant theme shift over time. Tangible

Business Aspects was the prominent theme in Time 2. In this period of time, coming out stories were more focusing on the negative impact on athletes’ career and future life.

Below is an excerpt from the coming out articles on David Kopay from The

Washington Post:

Kopay, you will recall, was the former NFL player (he played for the '49ers and the Redskins, among others) who ripped the lid off homosexuality among professional football players when he and Perry Deane Young wrote the bestseller, The David Kopay Story. Well, unable to find a job coaching in pro ball, Kopay last month settled for a job selling cars at Geary Ford in San Francisco (Amdur, 1981).

Below is another excerpt on David Kopay’s coming out from USA today. It also shows that the newspaper narrative is focused on the negative influence on his athletic career transition.

After David Kopay became the first pro football player to admit publicly his sexual preference for men, he is still unable to land a coaching position.

….''But I've been frustrated at finding a niche for myself. I'm disappointed at not having had any coaching opportunities. I've constantly been told forget it, there's no chance. I hadn't counted on this.''

The same theme was also found in Glenn Burke’s coming out story from USA today. It showed that how Glenn Burke got traded when he revealed his gay identity. The news narrative focused on how revealing his sexuality destroyed his baseball career.

The following excerpt was drawn from the coming out stories on Glenn Burke from USA today:

When the Dodgers found out I was gay, they wanted me to get married. Al Campanis (then team vice president) told me if I got married, it would make me more responsible and settle me down.

But then (manager Tommy) Lasorda traded me from the Dodgers to Oak- land in 1978. The Dodgers never really told me why they traded me. But some of the players wondered how the organization could trade its top prospect and asked why they traded me. That's when Lasorda told some of the players I was gay. When my career ended, I wasn't washed up. I just never got a chance to play again (USA today, 1991).

The author of this study believes that why the theme Tangible Business Aspect became the number one theme in Time 2 has much to do with the specific social environment at the time. The social movement Stonewall was marked as the first gay liberation movement in the fight for LGBT rights. Although it caused tremendous social impact on the US society, the general public was still unable to accept such ideology. There- fore, the coming out stories in the newspaper reflected exactly where the society stood.

Newspaper narratives mainly emphasized that gay identity does not conform to social values. By putting the negative consequences that American gay male athletes were facing into their news agenda, the newspaper were insinuating that gay male athletes would be punished when they challenged social values which favor hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity.

In Time 4, however, the theme Identity became the leading theme. With the increasing visibility and exposure from previous decades, newspaper outlets opened up the discussion about gay identity. The narrative seemed to shift the focus to how athletes with gay identity could potentially be a role model for teenagers and the young generation.

The following excerpt was pulled from the coming out story on Greg Louganis from The Washington Post:

Hyattsville resident Gigi Sohn, a member of the District's women's ice hockey team, said she was happy to hear about the exhibition, especially because of the possible effects on gay teenagers.

"Seeing Greg Louganis is great for a kid because he can say, 'Look, there's someone like me, and look how beloved and successful he is,' " she said. (Alexander, 1994)

The theme Optimism had the highest frequency of appearance among other themes in the coming out stories in Time 5 and Time 6. The gay male athletes who came out in this period of time were usually portrayed as heroes. Newspapers were constantly emphasizing their coming out as a great achievement for the US society to progress into inclusiveness. Most importantly, coming out reports in this period of time were eager to quote sources from teammates, political figures and celebrities to reflect the abundant support the gay male athletes had received. It indicated that not only were American gay male athletes not going to worry about the negative publicity, but also they were framed as positive images even outside their athletic venue. Below are the excerpts that adequately illustrate this point.

This excerpt is from the coming out story on Jason Collins from The Wall Street

Journal:

"We are extremely proud of Jason and support his decision to live his life proudly and openly," said Washington Wizards team president Ernie Grun- feld. "Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, Collins's former coach, said he is "extremely happy and proud" of Collins. "If you have learned anything from Jackie Robinson, it is that teammates are always the first to accept. It will be society who has to learn tolerance," Rivers said. (Clark, 2013)

The following excerpt is from the coming out story on Michael Sam from ESPN:

"We're really happy for Michael that he's made the decision to announce this, and we're proud of him and how he represents Mizzou," Pinkel said. "Michael is a great example of just how important it is to be respectful of others, he's taught a lot of people here first-hand that it doesn't matter what your background is, or your personal orientation, we're all on the same team and we all support each other." (Connelly, 2014)

As time progresses, themes went from Tangible Business Aspect to Identity and eventually to Optimism. When the social environment in Time 2 was not as inclusive as recent decades, the coming out stories were mainly focused on the trouble that gay athletes encountered. Whereas, in roughly two decades, the coming out stories of gay male athletes were saturated with praise and applause for their sexuality revelation announcement. It is hoped that this could eventually lead to greater societal acceptance and inclusiveness.

As suggested by previous literature, newspapers are a cultural institution that possesses great influence on people’s attitudes and thoughts (Lacy, Fico & Simon,

1991). By the different prominent themes showed in each time window, the implication can be drawn that major newspaper outlets were standing with what social values the

US society holds. Major newspaper outlets would frame news stories in a way that was favored by the US society, and in this case, by using a specific theme in framing Ameri- can gay male athletes’ coming out stories to align with the general social culture.

The findings from this study revealed that the news themes and narratives generally evolve in a positive direction. Therefore, such a trend in newspaper reports could

help bust the trenchant anti-gay sentiment and hegemonic masculinity culture in the sports world by granting gay male athletes positive recognition and support. Such a trend could serve as a catalyst to create momentum toward inclusiveness.

The findings in this study show that in Time 2, coming out stories are framed as neutral. However, the positive framing tone became the dominant one used by major

US newspapers in the last three time groups. This study did not find evidence to support the findings made by previous studies saying gay athletes do not enjoy fair treatment in the media (Butterworth, 2006). The author of this study did not find cases of coming out stories that were purely negative in terms of framing tone.

The author of this study believes that the reason why the negative framing tone was not adopted by major newspaper outlets could be political correctness. It is very likely that newspaper outlets are also subject to the hidden rule of political correctness when reporting sensitive and controversial issues. Therefore, when it comes to gay male athletes’ coming out stories, journalists are more likely to take a moderate stance.

Previous literature suggested that while gay male athletes enjoy large exposure and increasing visibility, much of the cultural homophobia and heterosexual privilege remains unchallenged and uncontested. The author believes that such a statement might still continue to have support in reality. However, the positive shifts of American gay male athletes’ representation and framing witnessed in this study are somewhat encouraging.

It is hoped that as the current positive trends toward American gay male athletes continue, the inclusiveness toward gay male athletes, especially homonormativity, will eventually be achieved.

The framing tone in newspaper narratives is also subject to the social values and culture. Media usually creates content that caters to the social norms (Cohen, 2015). As

US society has become more open in recent years, a positive framing tone has been witnessed in most coming out reports.

Team and physical contact sports received more coverage than individual and non-contact sports. Team and contact sports athletes were framed mostly with the theme Identity, whereas individual and non-contact sports athletes were framed mostly with the theme Social. There is no difference found in word count and framing tone under these four categories.

Team and physical contact sports, such as American football and rugby, show great contest intensity and violence. Such sports provide the perfect platform for the im- plementation of hegemonic masculinity. Most importantly, athletes from these sports programs are immune from being questioned of being gay (Trujillo, 1991). Therefore, when athletes come out from such sports programs, newspaper outlets would grant more stories on these athletes, since gay identities are not assumed in them which eventually causes the biggest challenge to and defiance of hegemonic masculinity when they come out.

Individual and non-contact sports usually possess fewer masculinity assets, especially sports such as diving and figure skating, in which gay identity is oftentimes assumed in these sports. Therefore, athletes participating in such sports that came out did not draw attention from the newspapers, and newspaper outlets are unwilling to report them, because they are just not newsworthy enough.

Another plausible reason why athletes in team sports were more likely to receive coming out stories could be the sports category itself. Since team sports require working closely with teammates and coaches, the coming out of athletes in team sports was less likely to be depicted as only a personal issue. Therefore, how the revelation could impact the team’s image and the reaction from teammates could be of great interest to the media. As a result, athletes on team sports coming out could cause bigger repercussions from more media coverage. When athletes in individual sports came out, on the other hand, it could always be perceived as a personal issue, which therefore could be of less interest to the media.

In terms of the theme difference between each category, although technically the theme Identity and the theme Social are different themes, according to the theme model, they both fall under the thematic branch (positive). Stories using the theme Social are more focused on societal acceptance toward not only gay athletes but also a discussion about inclusiveness toward gay issues as a whole. Stories using the theme

Identity are more focused on how athletes with gay identities could potentially be a role model for teenagers and the young generation. Both themes are granted in a positive manner in gay male coming out stories. The plausible answer to this finding about the theme differences that existed between categories can only be answered by journalists themselves, which is why future studies should retrieve first-hand data directly from journalism practitioners by using methods like interviews or surveys.

Finally, it could be understood that word count and framing tone are not framing maneuvers used by journalists in writing gay male coming out stories. The only way they used to preserve and reinforce hegemonic masculinity, if suggested by previous

literature, is through silencing gay male athletes by not granting gay male athletes reports into their newspapers.

This study brought a conclusion to the gap in the literature about the vague and ambivalent findings and arguments on the status of American gay male athletes in US media in studying gay men issues in the combination of sports and media. The representation of American gay male athletes is generally positive. In the 70s and 80s, Amer- ican gay male athletes were intentionally ignored by US major newspaper outlets, but in recent decades, American gay male athletes enjoy increasing visibility and story framing in the media. The biased and tendentious reports on American gay male athletes’ sexuality revelation back then suggested by previous literature were supported by the findings of this study. The author proposes that future studies should upgrade literature by conducting studies from the standpoints of visibility and homonormativity, since US major newspaper outlets are no longer a major barrier to hinder the inclusiveness toward

American gay male athletes and the LGBT community in general. Future focus should be put on examining how media comes to help challenge and contest heterosexual privilege and orthodox masculinity. The author believes, at the end of the day, it is not about the quantity of openly gay athletes and comings out stories; the real inclusiveness and eradication of homophobia in sports is when gay athletes coming out is no longer an issue and no longer worthy of the news.

CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

In this thesis, I sought to examine the representation and framing of American gay male athletes in their coming out stories and how major newspaper outlets write about such sensitive and controversial topics. Additionally, I examined whether or not there has been a shift from the standpoints of examining coverage frequency, word count, themes and three-dimensional valence (positive, neutral, negative). The primary findings suggest that there has been a positive coverage shift on coming out stories of

American gay male athletes. American gay male athletes were heavily censored by major newspaper outlets in Time 1. Major newspaper outlets back then were reluctant to write about gay male athletes coming out, especially considering such a coming out announcement was extremely newsworthy. This finding confirmed the results from previous studies that the homosexuality issue was intentionally excluded from the journalism industry due to conservative social norms and values (Lenskyj, 2013). However, as US society evolves with a greater level of acceptance, findings suggest that, closer to recent years, more coming out stories were presented.

In this study, the author did not find evidence that there has been a shift in the number of words dedicated to the coming out stories of gay male athletes. However, findings showed that there has been an obvious theme shift throughout the time frames and that prominent themes may be closely linked to sentiment toward homosexuality.

Tangible Business Aspects was the leading theme in Time 2. With the first gay rights movement, such as the Stonewall movement, happening early, coming out stories from this period of time were focused on the setbacks and failure of gay male athletes’ life and athletic career, reflecting that homosexuality does not conform to mainstream social

values, which could lead to consequences. In Time 4, with the increasing visibility and exposure of homosexuality, discussion about homosexuals, Identity became the number one theme in this era. In Time 5, homosexuality was not an uncommon thing in the social discussion and gay issues were accepted by a large number of US citizens. Op- timism stood out as the leading theme in both of these last two time groups. Other than reporting on the factual information of athletes’ coming out, newspapers were more likely to involve positive recognition about gay identity and called for increased social acceptance.

In Time 2, the framing tone was all neutral, whereas the majority of the coming out stories were framed in a positive tone in the latest three time groups. No coming out stories were framed in an absolute negative tone. Literature showed that athletes who publicly announced their sexuality were usually treated with biased and unfair narratives and reports (Gross, 2012). Findings from this study do have evidence to support this claim with the presence of negatively prone themes and the dearth of coming out stories in Time 1. Neutral is the worst framing tone in terms of three-dimensional valence that major newspaper outlets had gone down with in gay male athletes’ coming out reports.

Positive framing tone, however, has been adopted in the most in recent decades.

Findings indicated that team sports athletes are more likely to receive media attention when coming out than are athletes participating in individual sports. This is probably due to team sports, such as American football, embodying more masculinity attributes, resulting in team sports athletes coming out as bigger news. Whereas athletes doing individual sports, such as diving and figure skating, which possess fewer masculinity assets, received less media attention. Especially in sports like figure skat-

ing, homosexual identity was usually assumed in such sports. In terms of themes in their coming out stories, team sport athletes were usually associated with Identity, whereas athletes doing individual sports were usually granted with the Social theme.

Under the categories of contest and non-contact sports, findings revealed that athletes with sports involving physical contact received more coverage when they made their coming out announcement compared to athletes in sports without physical contact.

Identity was the primary theme used in coming out coverage of athletes with physical contest sports, whereas the theme Social was the primary one in non-contact athletes’ coming out narratives. There was no difference found in word count and framing tone under these two categories.

In conclusion, the representation of American gay male athletes in their coming out stories covered by mainstream newspapers is generally positive. There was an evidence found from this study that American gay male athletes received unfair treatment in the newspapers when they came out back in the day. Findings in this study show that mainstream newspaper outlets avoided reporting American gay male athletes when homosexuality was not well accepted in the US society history. The author of this study maintains that mainstream newspapers might have the attribute of preserving and reinforcing certain social values, in this case, hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity.

Interestingly, newspaper outlets tend to increase coverage of American gay male athletes, and actively call for social acceptance towards gay male athletes in recent years.

It can be understood that major newspaper outlets are no longer a determinant hin- drance for achieving inclusiveness in sports. Instead, the positive coverage and framing of American gay male athletes could help maximize the exposure and visibility of ath-

letes with gay identity, which could bring more attention in solving the hegemonic masculinity and anti-gay sentiment in locker rooms and sports as a whole.

CHAPTER 7 SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

This study assists in the advancement of understanding the inclusiveness towards American gay athletes under the combination of sports and media. This study provides a research model for studying the representation of athletes with sexual identity issues in the media. This research only focused on gay male athletes from the United

States. Future research should expand these demographics and include athletes with other sexual identities (for example, lesbian athletes, transgender athletes and bisexual athletes). Gender role should also be taken into consideration in future studies. It is important to understand how women athletes with sexual identity issues were portrayed by the US media. Since female are usually marginalized in sports, female athletes do not necessarily receive fair treatment in the media (Herek, 2002). For female athletes, not only are their athletic accomplishments trivialized but they are also victims of sexual objectification (Duncan, 2006). Therefore, future studies should examine what situation lesbian athletes are facing in terms of their representation in the media. Future studies should also put more emphasis on the influence of gender role on transgender athletes.

Research findings on male-to-female transgender athletes and female-to-male transgender athletes as well as their final sexual identities could help fill the gap in extant literature.

In this study, data analysis did not distinguish race difference. Future research could try to conduct studies from the standpoint of race. It may be likely that gay athletes of a different race are treated differently in the media.

In order to get the first-hand data, future research should conduct qualitative studies like interviews or surveys directly on reporters and sports journalists. In general,

there are few studies on journalists’ attitudes toward gay athletes (Kian et al., 2013).

Therefore, information about how news rooms handle such sensitive and controversial issues and the attitudes that journalists have could greatly facilitate scholars’ studies on this topic.

Last but not least, future studies should examine what readers’ attitudes and re- actions are when it comes to athletes’ coming out announcement in the media. The im- pacts that coming out stories have on readers and general US population deserve further attention.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Lin Lepeng attended Beijing Sport University where he received his BA in Per- formance in 2015. He earned an MS in Sport Management from the University of Flori- da in 2018.