<p> The media coverage of female athletes has been an uphill battle ever since the passing of Title IX in 1972 over 40 years ago. However, with the ever-increasing popularity of social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, this new age model of communication remains the low hanging fruit for shaping the ways in which female athletes are represented to a mass audience. Analyzing the content of the aforementioned platforms from the 2016 WNBA Playoffs and Finals seeks to answer four questions regarding the themes espnW and ESPN are communicating, how their messaging differs, the ways in which female athlete stereotypes are fed into or challenged, and the responses from espnW&rsquo;s and ESPN&rsquo;s social media following. Together, the findings relevant to each question imply a step in the right direction for how female athletes are covered today&mdash;for their athletic accomplishments and not for their sex appeal&mdash;but the overall volume of this coverage remains low. The battle continues for female athletes far and wide to find their footing and prove their relevancy in a male-dominated industry.</p><p>

<p> The primary purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the effect of emotions derived from the unique nature of spectator sport (e.g., intensive emotional responses, uncertainty of outcomes) on sport fans&rsquo; information processing and attitude formation regarding TV commercials presented in a sport broadcasting context. The current research advanced previous findings (e.g., Bee &amp; Madrigal, 2012; Wang &amp; Lang, 2012) related to the program-induced mood effect by making adjustments to the methodological approaches (e.g., real-time psychophysiological measures, mixed experimental designs) and by employing different theoretical approach (i.e., the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing). The affective priming paradigm (Bower, 1981, 1991) was re-conceptualized from the theoretical perspective of the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (Lang, 2006a, 2006b). </p><p> In order to test the study&rsquo;s hypotheses, a mixed method experimental design (i.e., game outcome [2] &times; uncertainty about outcome [2] &times; emotional tone of commercial [2] &times; video replication [2]) was employed. As hypothesized in this study, both the attitudinal formation and the information processing of emotional commercials by sports fans were significantly impacted by motivational systems which are activated by the outcomes (e.g., winning the game, losing the contest) and the closeness (e.g., tight game, lopsided score) of sporting events. The results of repeated measures of ANOVA indicate that the mood-inconsistent combination allocated more cognitive resource allocation to encoding. Moreover, the effects of commercials on attitudinal formations were significantly moderated by the game outcomes. </p><p> The current study provides several theoretical and managerial contributions in sport management and general motivated cognitive research. This study enriches our understanding of how sport fans process information and form attitudes relating to commercials. Furthermore, the results of this study related to the possible ways in which sport advertising influences consumers&rsquo; cognitive processing, attitudes, and so forth are of benefit to practitioners (e.g., sport team sponsors, sporting event advertisers) as well as scholars (e.g., sport marketing researchers). For example, by relying on the study&rsquo;s findings, marketing professionals in the field are able to create effective advertising strategies in order to maximize their goals (e.g., drawing attention to the commercial, increasing the memory of the viewer regarding the advertised product and brand, persuading the viewer to buy a product).</p>