UAAP 79 Women's Basketball - Media Coverage Analysis

This is an analysis of 29 media publications that post UAAP basketball articles online via their respective websites.

The main purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that there is significant room for improvement of media coverage for UAAP Women’s basketball in comparison to media coverage of UAAP Men’s basketball and to show that the difference is quite drastic.

Data Collection

Data was gathered from the 29 media publications and compiled into a spreadsheet available here. The media publication websites were found by searching for “UAAP news” in search engines and excluding duplicate results. The school specific publications were found on school websites, of which 4 UAAP schools (DLSU, ADMU, UST, UP) have online archives of publications.

Publications that post on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook exclusively were excluded due to the difficulty of searching through tens of thousands of posts and repeat posts and the difficulty of determining what is original content vs reposts. Although I suspect the results here are likely play out similarly on social media sites.

Results

There were 3172 articles covering UAAP basketball in Season 79.
2866 were for Men’s basketball.
306 were for Women’s basketball.

The largest difference showed by the data is that publications interview, profile, and analyze teams, coaches and players at a much higher volume for Men’s basketball (1378 articles) than for Women’s basketball (26 articles). Similarly, there were 360 game specific previews for Men’s basketball, and 26 game specific previews for Women’s basketball.

9 out of 10 articles covering UAAP basketball were about Men’s basketball.
1 out of 10 articles covering UAAP basketball were about Women’s basketball.

13 of the 29 publications covered Women’s basketball only once or not at all.
11 of the 29 publications covered Women’s basketball more than 10 times in the season.

9 of the 29 publications covered Men’s basketball over 100 times in the season.
0 of the 29 publications covered Women’s basketball 100 times in the season. Tiebreaker Times came closest with 85, followed by ABS-CBN with 36.

26 of the 29 publications featured a preview of a Men’s basketball game. 360 such articles featured.
6 of the 29 publications featured a preview of a Women’s basketball game. 26 such articles featured.

27 of the 29 publications featured an interview/profile/analysis of a specific Men’s basketball player, coach or team. 1378 such articles were featured.
5 of the 29 publications featured an interview/profile/analysis of a specific Women’s basketball player, coach or team. 26 such articles were featured, 21 by Tiebreaker Times.

60% of Women’s basketball articles included a photo.
46% of Women’s basketball articles that included photos came from Tiebreaker Times.
26% of Women’s basketball articles that included photos came from DLSU exclusive publications.

The data shows that Tiebreaker Times is the only publication that offers coverage of all UAAP Women’s basketball teams in a way that approaches the extensive coverage of Men’s basketball. However, it is the only media publication that offers such coverage of the Women’s division. Tiebreaker Times accounted for more than 1 out of every 4 UAAP Women’s basketball article, and nearly half of Women’s basketball photo content. About 25% of all media coverage of the Women’s division was for the championship finals and off-season awards such as MVP and Mythical Five. It should be noted that the majority of Men’s and Women’s basketball games were played in the same venues on the same days during Season 79. There is very little media coverage available during the elimination round that wasn’t from Tiebreaker Times, particularly photos.

Sources

This information can be found and checked by visiting the respective websites of the publications, ordered below by the number of UAAP basketball articles on their site.

ABS-CBN
http://sports.abs-cbn.com/uaap/basketball

Spin.ph
http://www.spin.ph/uaap/news/archives

Tiebreaker Times
http://tiebreakertimes.com/tbt/category/uaap

Inquirer.net
http://sports.inquirer.net/category/latest-stories/basketball

Sports Illustrated Philippines
http://www.sportsillustrated.com.ph/search?q=uaap

Rappler
http://www.rappler.com/sports/university/uaap
http://www.rappler.com/previous-articles?filterMeta=UAAP

Fox Sports Asia
http://www.foxsportsasia.com/en-ph/ncaa/

Philstar
http://www.philstar.com/sports/breaking-news

Slam Philippines
http://www.slamonlineph.com/category/high-school-college-d-league/

Business Mirror
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/category/sports/

CNN Philippines
http://cnnphilippines.com/search/?q=uaap&sort=PUBLISHDATE&order=DESC

Balita – Tagalog Newspaper Tabloid
http://balita.net.ph/category/sports/