The Master’s Thesis “Im Abseits oder am Fußball-Thron? Anstoß für eine Debatte über Frauenfußball” is written by Christian Hetzenauer. The Master’s Thesis is an analysis of the reporting and online debates of the Austrian women’s national football team during the UEFA European Championship. There is no practical work.
Level of Design:
Since there is no practical work, I cannot judge the level of design or the degree of innovation. Instead I will comment on the way the writer has brought football terms into his Master’s Thesis. It starts with the title, where football terms were forced into the title, which can be a nice idea as long as the title still tells the reader, what the Master’s Thesis is about. That was lost in this case seeing as one cannot tell what the thesis is written on, except for women’s football. The subtitle being “Eine Analyse der Berichterstattung und Online-Debatten zum österreichischen Frauen-Nationalteam bei der Fußball-Europameisterschaft 2017” is needed for that. In the eighth chapter the different sub chapters are called “first goal”, “second goal”, “third goal” and so on, which has nothing to do with the content of the chapter. When reading the table of contents it is hard to tell what each chapter is going to be about. The conclusion is called “final whistle”, which I believe is rather unprofessional.
Scope of the Work:
In the empirical research there are 30 online articles from the Standard, Presse and Kurier as well as 150 user comments analysed. This qualitative content analysis has been done in a thorough manner, using common ways of empirical research. The 30 texts that have been sampled, where not simply chosen by the writer, but selected with the help of theoretical sampling. The writer illustrates the results of the empirical research in a clear and comprehensible manner, including all necessary labels. Even the gender of the author of the articles is analysed and illustrated in a graph.
Independence:
The author has used common ways of empirical research and has based his work on these concepts. He has shown hardly any initiative and has not developed his own ideas.
Outline and Structure:
The author uses a lot of sub chapters for example 7.2.1.2.1, when most of these chapters are made up of four sentences or less. These sub chapters could have been merged together into one sub chapter, making it easier to follow the outline. The names of the chapters could be more precise, seeing as one cannot tell what the chapter will entail. On the plus side, the chapters go well into each other therefore the structure is logical.
Degree of Communication:
In the beginning of each chapter the author gives an overview what the following chapter will entail. Furthermore the intentions are made very clear in the abstract, which are then proven throughout the Master’s Thesis. It is very plausible to use a combination of articles and user comments, to get a feel of the viewer’s opinions as well as the overall feeling towards women’s football in Austria.
Orthography and Accuracy:
I have not seen any orthographical faults in the Master’s Thesis. The Master’s Thesis was not gendered, and there was also no disclaimer saying that the male form of the word includes the female form too. That is rather unusual.
Literature:
The bibliography is more than 14 pages long, and the literature is high quality with many academic journals and academic books.
Overall, I believe the master’s thesis could have been better in stylistic features but the research was done thoroughly.
Sources:
Hetzenauer, Christian. “Im Abseits oder am Fußball-Thron? Anstoß für eine Debatte über Frauenfußball.” Master’s Thesis, Universität Salzburg, 2019.
