Overview
As professional wrestling is a billion-dollar, multimedia phenomenon with an estimated 90 million fans worldwide, outreach for the Gender Disparity in Professional Wrestling project (GDPW) by design needs to cast a large net. The GDPW staff members leading this effort are Martin Bueno (in-person outreach) and Cathy Melamed (online).
It is important that GDPW stand out among the many individuals, groups, organizations and merchants vying for attention and media coverage in this sport. Thus, outreach needs to be professional and informative, but also not boring. During the building phase of GDPW we will focus on targeted social media posts as well as media and wrestling industry contacts; later, we will share the completed project with academic institutions and at professional wrestling events.
Website and Logo
GDPW will be hosted on the CUNY Commons as a WordPress site. We are looking into securing a domain name that will incorporate the project’s title and will link to the site. The license for the site is for three years, over which time updates with additional datasets and visualizations will be possible.
GDPW lead web developer Elijah Nunez is designing a (possibly animated) logo that includes a silhouette of a female wrestler, airborne in a drop-kick, over a wrestling ring that features “GDPW” in hot pink and purple letters on the mat.
Promoting and Sharing the GDPW Project
The strategy for promoting GDPW has three phases. The first is to post “teasers” on the social media site Reddit to gauge early interest while investigating SEO moves. We are initially posting only to Reddit wrestling fan forums to evaluate the project’s potential to trigger trolling. This first phase will also include contacting female professional wrestlers to see if any would like to provide guidance or collaboration. The second phase, when the project is closer to completion, will include reaching out to journalists who cover professional wrestling and to others working in the industry (i.e., filmmakers, promoters, archive and museum personnel) via an email featuring the eye-catching GDPW logo, the full title of the project, and a few words about when to expect the project’s launch. Finally, the completed project will be shared with all previous contacts as well as with academic institutions focused on digital humanities, sports studies, and gender/media studies. This last phase will also include creation of GDPW business cards (designed by Madison Watkins) with QR codes linked to the WordPress site; Martin will distribute these in person at wrestling events and conferences.
Measures of Effectiveness
As we branch out to publicize the project through more social media sites, analytics data will provide feedback on our outreach’s effectiveness. Responses from individuals connected with professional wrestling will also help the team predict potential visitors to the GDPW site when it goes live.
