Lauren Reichart Smith

Lauren Reichart Smith
Rowan University

Ph.D.

About

37
Publications
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Introduction
Lauren Reichart Smith (Ph.D. 2010) is an assistant professor of sports media at Rowan University. Lauren's main research encapsulates mass media and social media. She has completed research that focuses on issues of gender, race, and national identity. She has analyzed how athletes are portrayed in the media, examined how new technologies enhance a fan's enjoyment of a game, and examined the effects of participation in fantasy sports on enjoyment.

Publications

Publications (37)
Article
Content analysis was used to examine NBC’s primetime broadcast commentary from the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games (62 hours) and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games (61.5 hours) to ascertain differences in how male and female athletes were described. Using an expanded taxonomy to analyze the descriptor word(s) assigned to each athlete, NBC’s com...
Article
Previous studies of NBC’s primetime Olympic commentary have revealed differences in how the network describes male figure skaters as compared to the composite of other male Olympians. To determine if NBC presented male Olympic figure skaters differently than the composite of other male Olympians during its 2018 primetime Winter Olympic broadcast, a...
Chapter
Previous research into Olympic primetime broadcasts showed that American network announcers had, at times, used different language when discussing the success, failure, and personality/physicality of Asians and athletes of Asian descent when directly compared to Black, White, or Latino/Hispanic athletes (Billings, Angelini, & MacArthur, Olympic tel...
Article
The National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) primetime broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics over 18 nights was analyzed to determine differences between the network’s treatment of U.S. and non-U.S. Olympians. Consistent with previous findings, an American athlete was the most mentioned athlete, and Americans composed the majority of the Top 20 m...
Article
All 63.5 hours of NBC’s 2018 primetime Winter Olympic broadcast from PyeongChang were analyzed to determine differences between the network’s treatment of male and female athletes. For the first time in any Winter Olympiad studied, women received more athlete mentions than men and women accounted for the majority of the most mentioned athletes. A w...
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Previous research on the effects of visual framing of athletes has inferred that photographic visual frames drive visual behavior by demonstrating that visual frames influence picture viewers’ evaluative ratings and memory for the pictures. This study uses eye-tracking methodology to ask if these previous findings are actually the result of visual...
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The framing of child sex abuse in media has previously been examined to uncover the potential ways news media could influence public perception about the issue. This mixed methods analysis of the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal involving USA gymnastics and Michigan State University, grounded in the principles of framing theory, examines the patterns...
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Televised coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games featured a record number of female athletes competing. However, NBC and its commentators faced public scrutiny for their use of sexist language in discussing these athletes. A within-subjects experiment (N = 78) featuring NBC video of three different 2016 Olympic events tested the relationship bet...
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The number of athlete social protests has risen over the past several years, but no protest has touched a collective national nerve as kneeling for the national anthem has. Using the theoretical framework of social identity theory, this study examined how nationalistic attitudes affect participants' perceptions of athletes who engage in a form of a...
Article
The purpose of this study was to examine how Michigan State University (MSU) utilized Facebook as a tool for image repair following the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal. Specifically, the researchers were concerned with the image-repair approach utilized by MSU during Nassar’s hearing and in its immediate aftermath. Additionally, the researchers exam...
Article
Sports fans are increasingly turning to Twitter to experience events and receive commentary. Using the theoretical grounding of disposition theory, this study surveyed sports fans to measure how Twitter potentially influenced their enjoyment of viewing live and mediated sporting events. Respondents primarily used Twitter to augment their consumptio...
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The following study represents the first attempt in to empirically analyze the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s (CBC) prime time Olympic broadcast to determine if there were significant trends based on the sex of the athlete. All 72 hours of the CBC’s 2014 prime time Winter Olympic broadcast were analyzed. When excluding mixed-pair competitions, me...
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This essay centers on the concepts of catfishing and online impersonation. Utilizing the Manti Te’o catfishing hoax and the Texas Tech football coaching staff’s admittance of using fake profiles on social media to follow their players as a basis, this piece will examine past instances of athletes and catfishing and the connection between collegiate...
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An empirical analysis was conducted focusing on how the United States-based NBC and the Canada-based CBC portrayed male figure skaters in comparison with their male Winter Olympic counterparts on the networks' primetime 2014 Olympic broadcasts. Using 100% of all primetime broadcast content as a universe of investigation, NBC's and the CBC's comment...
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All 63 h of the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) scheduled primetime coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic broadcast were analyzed revealing significant sex-based trends. Women athletes received 47.7% of the clock-time on the broadcast, more than in any other Winter Olympiad examined, and significantly more than in the previous four Winter...
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The CBC’s and NBC’s primetime broadcasts of the 2014 Winter Olympics were analyzed to determine differences between the media treatment of home nation and foreign athletes. The CBC results showed that Canadian athletes represented 48.5% of total athlete mentions and constituted all of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes. NBC results showed that Amer...
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Using Goffman’s notions of self-presentation and gender displays, the following study examines the Instagram feeds of 27 professional athletes to determine how athletes are using the visual social media site for self-presentation. A mixed methods approach examined the photographs and captions to determine what behaviors and themes emerged. Through...
Article
This study compared coverage differences in gender of athletes in the photographs over the five years of publication of ESPN The Magazine's annual “Body Issue.” Grounded in the theoretical basis of framing, gender, photograph motion and context, and amount of clothing worn in photographs were examined for incidence of gender bias. Though males and...
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Many studies offer clear evidence that exposure to glamorized and sexualized media images results in distorted body image perceptions in girls and young women. Researchers have examined the link between sports media exposure and the negative effect on body perceptions of young girls and women, though a gap exists in the examination of the relations...
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This study compared coverage differences in gender of athletes in the photographs over the five years of publication of ESPN The Magazine’s annual “Body Issue.” Grounded in the theoretical basis of framing, gender, photograph motion and context, and amount of clothing worn in photographs were examined for incidence of gender bias. Though males and...
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Full-text available
In 1996 women’s softball made its first ever appearance in the Summer Olympic Games. Not 10 years later, the International Olympic Committee announced softball and baseball would no longer be included in the Summer Olympic Games after 2008. Research is rich on the role mass media plays in shaping opinions and framing attitudes. Using framing theory...
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Previous analyses have indicated strong tendencies for a host Olympic network to favor one’s home nation through enhanced clock-time, highlighting of star athletes from one’s home country, and more nuanced and positive dialogues. Analysis of NBC’s 2012 London Summer Olympic broadcast revealed significant differences between American and non-America...
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This study analyzed all 69 hours of NBC's primetime coverage of the 2012 London Summer Olympics to determine which sports were most likely to contain divergences in dialogue by gender of athlete. Coding over 14,000 descriptors, 23 significant differences were detected: 11 attributions of athletic success and failure and 12 depictions of personality...
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Analysis of NBC's 2012 London Summer Olympic broadcast revealed significant differences between athletes of different ethnic backgrounds. Regarding athletic mentions, White athletes were more likely to be mentioned (64.3%) than all other athletes combined, with significant differences found in the reporting of an athlete from differing ethnic backg...
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Media psychology involves the scientific examination of the cognitive processes and behavior involved in the selection, use, interpretation, and effects of communication across a variety of media (e.g., via the Internet, television, telephone, film). Media are central to people's lives, with projections indicating that an average person spent over...
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All sixty-nine hours of National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) 2012 primetime Summer Olympic telecast were analyzed, revealing significant gender trends. For the first time in any scholarly study of NBC's coverage of the games, women athletes received the majority of the clock-time and on-air mentions. However, dialogues surrounding the attributions...
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This study represents an analysis of eight games from National Broadcasting Company’s broadcast of the 2010 Olympic ice hockey coverage. Since ice hockey is a sport considered to be “masculine,” the study is ground in hegemonic masculinity. The visual production techniques were analyzed using Zettl’s applied media aesthetics approach to analyze cam...
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In 2012, South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius became the first double amputee to compete in both the Olympic and the Paralympic Games. Using the theoretical notions of framing and hegemony, this study used a thematic analysis to analyze the discourse surrounding Pistorius’s competitions. Using the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) broadcasts...
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This study represents a content analysis of five matches of the US women's beach volleyball team during the 2008 Summer Games. Play-by-play commentary and between-play commentary were analyzed for all five games, and all court shots and camera angles were coded. The main objective of this study was to observe the visual and verbal aspects of the pr...
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The head–body ratio of 716 profile pictures and user-provided information on the US online social networking site Facebook (423) and VKontakte (293), the Russian equivalent of Facebook, were analyzed to test differences in facial prominence in profile photos posted on Facebook. The social psychology theory of face-ism was used to measure the head–b...
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This case study, using social-identity theory as a framework, examines how sport consumers and producers used different identifiers to engage in conversation during the final games of the 2012 College World Series of baseball. Five major hashtags were noted for each baseball team as primary identifiers; users fit in 3 main groups and subgroups. The...
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The head-body ratios of more than 1400 profile pictures of seven different nations were analyzed to test differences in facial prominence in the profile photos posted on social networking sites. The social psychology theory of face-ism was used to measure the head-body ratio of men and women. Results show that men were significantly higher in facia...
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Disposition theory research within mediated sporting events has traditionally looked at the relationship between enjoyment and outcome. A gap currently exists in the theory concerning the effect of the different elements of the mediated content. The purpose of this study was to examine one such element of mediated content. This study used a 2 × 2 ×...
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This study represents a content analysis of 10 beach volleyball games for the men?s and women?s team USA during the 2008 Summer Games. Play-by-play commentary and between-play commentary were analyzed for all 10 games, and all court shots and camera angles were coded. Using earlier work examining the existence or presence of gender inequities in me...

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