The Chicago Bulls are one of the most recognizable sports teams in the world. Regardless of which city's team the Bull's play against, the arena is sold out days in advance. Bulls merchandise is some of the hottest selling sports paraphernalia across the country. The public's fascination with this extraordinary collection of athletes is nothing short of remarkable.
Three dominant personalities emerge from this soon-lobe championship team. The "Big Three" consist of Michael Jordan, who led the team to 72 wins this year and is widely regarded as the best player to ever pick up a basketball; Dennis Rodman, the flamboyant rebounder who appears naked on the cover of his new book, and; Scottie Pippen, a quiet, soft-spoken all-around talent that avoids the media when possible. These three gifted athletes are some of the most recognizable men in America.
After a heated argument with a group of my friends, I discovered that not everyone has me same opinion on which of these three players the media covers the most. It appeared to me that Michael Jordan seemed to get more pictures in the papers then the other two. I wanted to take a content analysis of the Chicago Tribune sports' section to see if my observations held water.
The variable I chose to examine was the photo selections in the Chicago Tribune sports's section. Although the articles far outnumber the photographs, the photographs have a great deal of importance. Regardless of whether the team won or loss, the Tribune usually includes an action photo of one of the three main players I mentioned earlier. The photo gives exposure to a player. A photo is significant in the fact that it singles out a player and leads the reader to assume that the player photographed had a impact on the outcome of the game. While an article could take quotes from numerous players, a photo highlights only one or two.
My research hypothesis was that the number of photos of Michael Jordan, Scoffle Pippen, and Dennis Rodman will not be equal. My null hypothesis, on the other hand, is that there will be an equal distribution of photos awarded to all three superstars.
I singled out April as an active basketball month for the Bulls. I reviewed every sports section that month and counted the number of photos taken of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman. I had to first distinguish what would be considered a picture where one or more of these players was highlighted.
The picture first had to be within the sports section of the Tribune. I did not count pictures on the front page of the paper because they were simply smaller color reproductions of the pictures that would follow in the sports section. I disregarded images or photos of the athletes that appeared in advertisements or endorsements. Because action photos in team sports often include more people than the highlighted athlete, I did not include everyone within the frame. For instance, if the picture was a shot of Michael Jordan dunking the ball and Scottie Pippen happened to be picking his nose in the background, I would only tally a photo point for Michael. Conversely, I ran across a picture where Michael, Dennis, and Scottie were walking side by side talking after a timeout. For pictures such as these, I referred to the caption to determine who the picture was actually highlighting.. In doing so I assured that no picture could contain more than one of the Big Three. A picture would only be included if it highlighted one of the three, but according to my definition it could only highlight one of three even if it pictured more than one. As a result the categories are exhaustive and exclusive.
I initially assumed my study would be strictly a manifest coding scheme. I assumed that everyone would view the photos exactly as I did. Because of the simplistic focus of the photos I feel confident that this coping scheme was accurate. However, if I had chosen a different topic and chose to categorize photos that had artistic themes, a latent coding /scheme might be more appropriate. Everyone might not get the same theme from the photo. As it were, I gave up the validity of the latent coding scheme, but gained the reliability that exists when employing the guidelines I defined with the manifest coding scheme.
The content coding itself was the most enjoyable part of the process. I went through all of the sports sections in the month of April of the Chicago Tribune. The only problem that arose was that I spent more time than I had initially planned on because I kept rereading the articles. I made three lists representing the three levels of my variable. When I found a photo that met my criteria, I awarded a "photo point" by simply checking the appropriate list. After completing the search, I tallied my points.
Dennis Rodman=13
Michael Jordan =30
ScottiePippen =11
I then preceded to determine if there was a pattern to this data or not by using a one sample chi-square test. I first found the theoretical value -what the observations should be if there were no pattern- by dividing the total number of observations by the number of levels.
54/3= 18
I then compared the theoretical values with the actual values by calculating a chi-square. (See Notes.)
chi-square = 13.89
Next, I determined if the value that I obtained was unusual. Unusual is defined as happening less than 5 times out of 100. I calculated the degrees of freedom to find the correct distribution to look at.
df=3-1 =2
After referencing the chi-square table on page 415 of the notebook, I found that the critical value for .05 probability is 5.99 and the critical value for .01 probability is 9.21. Because my chi-square value of 13.89 is larger than 9.21, I can reject null hypothesis with a 99% confidence level. This means that the fact that there is a difference in the distribution of photos is due to a pattern and not to just chance.
The fact that there is a pattern to data is not exactly surprising, although I cannot assume what the results mean. I would attribute the distribution of photos to the fact that Michael Jordan is the greatest player to ever play. Because he is the leading scorer in the league and the league's most valuable player, I would hypothesize that this would equate in to more coverage in the media than his teammates. My guess is that the editors of the Tribune feel their readers want to see what Michael Jordan did in the game. Possibly, they feel that readers look at the sports section not to see how the Bulls played, but how Michael played.
What I found interesting was according to talent most people would rank Scottie Pippen far above Dennis Rodman. However, the Tribune leaned toward Rodman for photos more than Pippen. Although Pippen has been on the team for eight years and has won three championships in Chicago, he still falls behind Dennis Rodman, a newcomer. I think it would be interesting to take another study analyzing media coverage of Scottie Pippen before and after the arrival of Dennis Rodman. I would expand the time frame and possibly use two or three daily papers to examine coverage.
It has been an exciting year to be a Bulls fan in Chicago. The content analysis paper gave me a chance to examine my favorite team a little more closely.