MONITORING WOMEN’S FOOTBALL IN ITALY AND ITS COVERAGE IN RAI NEWS PROGRAMS

Women’s sport, especially football, has grown exponentially in recent years; as a matter of fact, in 2022 world records for attendance in women’s football have been broken, iconic stadiums, for instance like Fc Barcelona’s Camp Nou and England’s Wembley Stadium have been sold out for women’s football matches, and with the UEFA women’s European championship just concluded, it might be argued that the new media coverage standards have been set. In Italy, however, men’s sport, particularly football, the most popular and by some considered as the national sport par excellence, seems to preserve the monopoly of media coverage. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyze the coverage of women’s football in the Italian public television at both a qualitative and quantitative level. In fact, based on a study conducted in the United States by Cooky et al., in 2013 titled “Women play sports, but not on TV: A longitudinal study of televised news media”, it will be analyzed how women’s football is represented on the main public television channels, Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai3, and in particular, the news programs broadcasted during the two main time slots, i.e., 11:00-14:00 and 18:00-21:00.