Visibility of Women’s Sport and Online Backlash

Women’s sports are undergoing a professionalization process, accelerated by enhanced media visibility on traditional and digital media platforms (Bowes & Culvin, 2022). However, the visibility of and advocacy for women’s sport is also accompanied by online backlash. Drawing on data from multiple studies on the mediated visibility of women’s sport, this talk provides insight into the complex ways in which various stakeholders that create content – including journalists, women’s sports organizations, athletes, sponsors, and fans – use digital platforms to bring visibility to women’s sport, with a specific focus on these stakeholders’ role in advocacy. Although the dominant industry and media narratives – highlight the incredible “momentum” in women’s sport, persistent structural inequalities exist that also facilitate online backlash, misogyny, and harm.

The talk highlights patterns in the relationship between visibility and backlash, calling for caution in interpreting the current moment of women’s sport as a sign of “progress.”

Dr Dunja Antunovic from Minnesota University will be presenting her work on the online backlash that has accompanied the increasing visibility of and advocacy for women’s sport. Please see further details about the talk and Dunja’s other work attached.

When and where: 

August 20th: 3pm (GMT) Please register HERE

Dr Dunja Antunovic (PhD, Penn State) is an Assistant Professor of Sport Sociology at the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. She is also an affiliate faculty member with the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication and an affiliate scholar with the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. Antunovic’s research examines the media visibility of women’s sport, with a focus on media production, representation, and consumption. She is co-author of Serving Equality: Feminism, Media, and Women’s Sport. In addition to her U.S.-based research, she also conducts cross-national comparative research on diversity in sports media in Central and Eastern Europe. She has published on theoretical and methodological approaches in feminist sport media studies and sociological analyses of social media. Antunovic serves on the editorial board for Communication & Sport and the Sociology of Sport Journal.