News values of sports events: an application of a newsworthiness model on the World Cup coverage of US and Korean media

Abstract

This study examined whether news value indicators influenced sports coverage of the 2002 World Cup soccer games by using a newsworthiness model. The model hypothesized that the more significant and the more deviant an event is, the more prominently the event is covered by the media. Significance and deviance of each match in the World Cup games are operationally defined by using world rankings such as FIFA points, William Hill betting points, and CNN power rankings. Prominence of media coverage for each match was measured as the dependent variable in four different contexts: US traditional media, US online media, Korean traditional media, and Korean online media. The results of our study show that the newsworthiness model is partially effective in predicting media coverage of sports events. Traditional media coverage is better explained by the newsworthiness model than online media coverage.