This is part 2 of an analysis looking at the ratio of action photos to portrait photos in the media coverage of basketball and volleyball in the Philippines. Part 1 [here] looked at articles on Philippine media sites posted from April 28 to July 28. Part 2 now looks at articles posted from July 29 to October 29.
Results
(Full results with the site-by-site breakdown available in the Excel spreadsheet [here])
Basketball was 82.43% of all articles – 5612 in total
Volleyball was 17.57% of all articles – 1196 in total
Basketball
96.20% – Men’s basketball – 5399 articles
3.80% – Women’s basketball – 213 articles
Volleyball
14.38% – Men’s volleyball – 172 articles
85.62% – Women’s volleyball – 1024 articles
Articles with action photo
61.75% – Men’s basketball – 3334 total
49.77% – Women’s basketball – 106 total
34.88% – Men’s Volleyball – 60 total
40.82% – Women’s Volleyball – 418 total
Articles with portrait photo
29.71% – Men’s basketball – 1604 total
25.35% – Women’s basketball – 54 total
48.84% – Men’s volleyball – 84 total
48.93% – Women’s Volleyball – 501 total
Articles with no photo
8.54% – Men’s basketball – 461 total
25.35% – Women’s basketball – 54 total
16.28% – Men’s volleyball – 28 total
10.16% – Women’s volleyball – 104 total
19 out of 21 sites used action photos 50% of the time or more in men’s basketball.
7 out of 21 sites used action photos 50% of the time or more in women’s basketball.
5 out of 21 sites used action photos 50% of the time or more in men’s volleyball.
5 out of 21 sites used action photos 50% of the time or more in women’s volleyball.
0 out of 21 sites used portrait photos 50% of the time or more in men’s basketball.
4 out of 21 sites used portrait photos 50% of the time or more in women’s basketball.
8 out of 21 sites used portrait photos 50% of the time or more in men’s volleyball.
10 out of 21 sites used portrait photos 50% of the time or more in women’s volleyball.
The top 3 action photo sites in men’s basketball:
By volume:
Spin.ph – 665 articles
Inquirer – 485 articles
Tiebreaker Times – 457 articles
By percentage:
Daytime View – 100%
The Lasallian – 87.50%
Rappler – 80.65%
The top 3 action photo sites women’s basketball:
By volume:
Tiebreaker Times – 41 articles
Dugout – 27 articles
Varsitarian – 10 articles
By percentage:
The Lasallian – 80%
Dugout – 75%
Tiebreaker Times – 74.55%
The top 3 action photo sites in men’s volleyball:
By volume:
Tiebreaker Times – 22 articles
Varsitarian – 10 articles
Spin.ph – 9 articles
By percentage:
Daytime View – 100%
The Guidon – 80%
Spin.ph – 60%
The top 3 action photo sites in women’s volleyball:
By volume:
Spin.ph – 99 articles
Tiebreaker Times – 55 articles
Inquirer – 49 articles
By percentage:
The Guidon – 88.89%
Daytime View – 85.42%
Spin.ph – 56.90%
The top 3 portrait photo sites in men’s basketball:
By volume:
Spin.ph – 412 articles
Inquirer – 264 articles
ABS-CBN Sports – 187 articles
Tiebreaker Times – 187 articles
By percentage:
ABS-CBN Sports – 49.08%
Sports 5 – 47.06%
Go Archers – 41.18%
The top 3 portrait photo sites in women’s basketball:
By volume:
Tiebreaker Times – 14 articles
Fox Sports Asia – 10 articles
Inquirer – 6 articles
By percentage:
ABS-CBN Sports – 100%
Interaksyon – 100%
Fox Sports Asia – 58.82%
The top 3 portrait photo sites in men’s volleyball:
By volume:
Tiebreaker Times – 29 articles
Inquirer – 13 articles
Manila Times – 9 articles
By percentage:
DLSU Office of Sports Development – 100%
Volleyverse – 87.50%
Manila Times – 81.82%
The top 3 portrait photo sites in women’s volleyball:
By volume:
Volleyverse – 126 articles
Inquirer – 84 articles
Spin.ph – 75 articles
By percentage:
The Lasallian – 100%
Go Archers – 100%
Volleyverse – 86.30%
Thoughts
The first thing that stood out for me was that there were 793 more basketball articles written than the previous three months, a 16% increase. And there were 546 fewer volleyball articles written than the previous three months, a 31% drop. Once again publications showed a strong preference to using action photos for basketball players and portrait photos for volleyball players, although there was a small increase in use of action photos for every category except men’s basketball.
Part of the purpose of this analysis is to see what patterns of action/portrait photo usage arise during different times of year when different leagues are playing within the next 3, 6, and 12 months. The UAAP and NCAA basketball seasons led to more basketball articles being published in this 3 month period than last time period, and basketball rose from being 73% to being 82% of all articles counted. This is a very significant increase, and may be a bit of a surprise to volleyball fans given that media coverage of volleyball events has been becoming more and more available. This shows that volleyball is still by far a secondary sport in the Philippines despite receiving increased attention and increased TV coverage. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA, UAAP and PSL volleyball seasons being played concurrently in 2018 and all airing on TV will result in a large increase of volleyball articles being written. I suspect that UAAP volleyball will bring the largest rise in volleyball articles in a similar way that UAAP basketball appears to have brought upon an upward spike of basketball articles.
No volleyball leagues played games during the SEA Games in August, so although the Philippine national team was covered extensively by multiple publications there are usually two volleyball leagues playing during any given month, and 10-20 teams playing will provide a lot more material for writing about than just 1. This is probably the biggest reason for the 31% drop in the number of volleyball articles during this time. The 16% uptick in the number of basketball articles is most likely due to the UAAP basketball season getting underway, with the UAAP is the 2nd most written about basketball league in the Philippines behind the PBA.
UAAP is pretty much the only women’s basketball league that receives any media attention. Prior to the season starting, most of the articles for women’s basketball were about the Philippine national team, Perlas. The media coverage of women’s basketball tripled with the start of the UAAP basketball season, 213 articles rather than the previous 67. That being said, the percentage of women’s basketball articles without a photo stayed nearly the same, only dropping 1 point to 25%. The increased coverage did result in a slight rise in action photos usage, something I mentioned to be likely in the previous analysis.
The numbers and percentages for men’s volleyball articles remained nearly static in every way, with only 10 more articles being written (182 total) and a slight 5% increase in action photos being one of the few changes.
The percentage of women’s volleyball articles with action photos went up 7 points to 40.8%, portrait photos dropped 9 points to 48.9%, and articles with no photo also went up 1 point to 10.2%. I suspect the drop in portrait photo use has a lot to do with the Philippine national team having fewer photos available of them due to spending a significant amount of time in Malaysia for the SEA Games. The photos of the Philippine team made available by photographers at the tournament were almost exclusively action photos, and a number of publications used these select few photos in their articles about the national team. Anecdotally, it appeared to me that old photographs of foreign players that were brought in to be imports for the PSL were nearly always action photos or cell phone quality profile photos. That is, the professional quality photos of foreign players, taken by photographers in other countries, were nearly always action photos. Subsequently, the number of action photos of the imports being used by the various publications appeared to drop significantly as soon as photos taken by local photographers started being used.
Informed by the previous three month analysis, the overall rate of action photos on Daytime View has gone up, particularly in men’s and women’s volleyball. This is one of the few websites that appears to put conscious thought into the action/portrait photo rates, and I’m not sure yet what percentages this site will settle on in the long run. Unfortunately, Daytime View fell short of the goal of increasing men’s volleyball coverage, but there is an opportunity with the upcoming NCAA volleyball season to meet that goal. Additionally, Daytime View wasn’t able to obtain a media pass for covering UAAP for the first semester, and so was unable to cover both men’s and women’s UAAP Basketball. To end this on a positive note, Daytime View ranked 9th in the total number of volleyball articles published in the past six months. I believe this is a very nice ranking for a small, new media publication, and I hope the ranking can be increased in the next six months to come.
Media websites included in the analysis:
https://www.daytimeview.com/
http://sports.inquirer.net/
http://sports.abs-cbn.com/
http://cnnphilippines.com/
http://www.philstar.com/
http://www.gmanetwork.com/
http://www.rappler.com/
http://www.manilatimes.net/
http://www.foxsportsasia.com/en-ph/
http://sports.mb.com.ph/
http://sports.tv5.com.ph/
http://tiebreakertimes.com/
http://www.interaksyon.com/
http://volleyverse.com/
http://www.spin.ph/
http://www.dugout.ph/
http://www.theguidon.com/
http://thelasallian.com/
http://goarchers.com/
http://dlsusports.com/
http://varsitarian.net/
