The purpose of the research was to determine whether media in sports had been engaging in biased portrayals of athletes in prominent positions in their respective sport. The quarterback position has been mostly played by white men, so this led me to believe that bias representations could be occurring in portrayals of NFL quarterbacks. Therefore, the research question I looked to answer was,
“What is the effect of racial identity on the media portrayals of NFL quarterbacks on ESPN?”
The cause-and-effect relationship of this question is the racial identity of NFL quarterbacks causing a biased media portrayal of themselves in sports coverage. This is due to race being inherent with bias, and media portrayals being the way to analyze the biased representations. The specific focus of the study was ESPN due to their popularity and notoriety in the sports world. due to race being inherent with bias, and media portrayals being the way to analyze the biased representations. The specific focus of the study was ESPN due to their popularity and notoriety in the sports world.
The study was a content analysis of ESPN coverage of four white and four Black successful/controversial quarterbacks, with media items selected via purposive sampling. I conducted a basic content analysis, where I focused on the positive and negative words and phrases used to discuss the quarterbacks of the study. An interpretive content analysis coded for patterns or themes when looking for meaning in the representations of the quarterbacks.