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A Tale of Two Champions: LSU and Southern University Compete for Coverage in Louisiana Newspapers

The studys purpose was to discover if two Louisiana newspapers gave Louisiana State Universitys football team more favorable coverage than that of the team from Southern University, a historically black university. A content analysis of articles published in The Advocate (Baton Rouge) and the Times-Picayune (New Orleans) from the 1995 and 1998 seasons when Southern Universitys team accomplished greater success than LSUs team, and the 2003 season when both teams won national championship titles revealed that while LSUs team did not receive more prominent coverage and praise than Southern Universitys team, racial stereotypes appeared throughout the 667 articles analyzed.
Although each team has a predominant number of black players, characteristics stereotypical of white players (intelligence, hard work) were used to describe LSUs football team, which represents a predominantly white university. Characteristics stereotypical of black players (athletic ability) were used in describing Southerns football team, which represents a historically black university. Although there was not significantly more black stereotypes used to describe Southern than LSU, LSU players were framed significantly more often as intelligent and hard working than were Southern players. These findings are consistent with modern racism theory.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-12092004-230815
Date10 December 2004
CreatorsRicks, Damiane Christopher
ContributorsRenita Coleman, Ralph Izard, Lori Boyer
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-12092004-230815/
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