Communication & Sport

In this essay, Garry Whannel reflects on why research on media and sport has often been disdained by traditional academia and liberal intelligentsia. The first section argues that mediated sports are an important constituent part of popular culture, making its discourses worthy of scholarly study. The second section considers how early studies of mediated sport set in the tradition of British cultural studies opened the door to a inquiry that has grown in importance in both critical sport and media studies. The central section focuses on the complexities of “sport analysis, snobbery, and anti-intellectualism.” Considered here is the early and continued resistance to the study of media and sport and its derogatory stigmatization as a “Mickey Mouse” subject even in the face of excellent scholarship that has developed around the cultural and political analysis of sport. The article closes with suggestions for future work and ways to change narrative constructions of the field.

In this essay, David Rowe reflects on how the nexus of sport and communication has affected national and global sensibilities. Sport contests take place at particular times in specific places, usually in a stadium setting, but not all who desire to watch can be present in the stadium. Without mediated communication, the vast edifice of contemporary sport would have remained largely localized, segmented activities. Progressively under modernity, print media could discuss and interpret sport for those who were far distant; electronic media brought the sights and sounds of the unique event to them in real time, and much else besides; and now online media enable people all over the world to communicate with each other about sport. Communication and sport are, then, demonstrably indissoluble and of intrinsic importance as a focus of sociocultural organization, activity, identity, and affect as well as of capital accumulation. Mediated sport is thereby carried into virtually every other sociocultural domain. Understanding the dynamics of communication and sport is, therefore, an essential capability for anyone who wishes to function as an engaged, knowledgeable citizen of a sport-saturated world that they may not have made but must nonetheless inhabit.

In this essay, Michael Real reflects on why communication about sport is of cultural importance and worthy of critical study. The early part of the essay reflects on challenges faced in the development of the study of communication and sport and the author’s involvement in that development. The author reflects on his choice to focus on spectacle and mega-events, such as media treatment of the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games. The essay traces significant influences and “schools” of critical approaches to communication and sport, from small beginnings in the 1970s through rapid expansion of topics and methods in the 1980s and since. Key historic contributions that have influenced research on communication and sport are examined along with conflicts about how to best approach this subject. The focus section of the essay assesses a number of broad theoretical lenses that have value in studying mediated sport’s mega-events as spectacle. Considered here are a Geertz style approach to ritual analysis, Debord’s society of the spectacle, and Roche’s theory of mega-events. The essay closes with comment on the road ahead for scholarly research on communication and sport.

In this essay, Robert Bellamy reflects on scholarly work focused on understanding sports media institutions and their strategies over the past 25 years. The first section assesses the economic and cultural importance of sport as a media product, and, in particular, as a television product in an era of structural change. The second section of the article considers the author’s path to focusing research concerns on the institutional dynamics behind sports programming in the media marketplace. The focus section of the essay considers the merits and limitations to using an industrial organizations approach (i.e., structure–conduct–performance) to study sport communication within a larger political–economic context. Considered here are key issues about regulatory policy options, barriers to entry in the marketplace for sport media product, prospects for structural change, responsiveness to changing usage patterns, and the evolution of branding strategies in a multiple channel environment. The essay closes with consideration of future directions for industry and economic studies of media and sport institutions and their strategies for monetizing sport as media product.

In this essay, Paul M. Pedersen provides a personal reflection on communication and sport and examines the area of strategic communication and management. His assessment begins with an overview of the growth and significance of the sport industry and communication’s ubiquitous and influential roles within it. In tracing his scholarly journey, Pedersen comes to see communication as an essential element in the sport industry, whether viewed from individualistic, organizational, or sport-specific perspectives. The focus section in this essay examines research on the Strategic Sport Communication Model (SSCM) and its usefulness in categorizing and operationalizing the field from a strategic management perspective. Using the SSCM as the guide, this reflection provides examples of sport communication research focused on each of the model’s three components. The reflection concludes with an analysis of future research opportunities, particularly opportunities to explore strategic decisions and effectiveness in the sport industry’s use of new/social media. Pedersen concludes that a key to developing best communication practices will be a research agenda that more fully contextualizes strategic communication and management in the sport marketplace.

In this essay, Nick Trujillo considers his research agenda and interest in communication and sport. The opening section reflects on why communication and sport matters and the many challenges that research faced in this area to be seen as important in communication studies. The section examines influences on the author’s personal and scholarly journey that framed his focus on sport in the organizational setting. The focus section of the essay on “Ethnography and Sport Organizations” considers the relative paucity and development of ethnographic research on sport organizations and reflects on the process and findings in the author’s research agenda on sport organizations and stadiums. The essay closes with observations for future communication and sport research and the continued prospects for this area of inquiry to develop.

In this essay, Wayne Wanta reflects on sports reporting and journalists in the context of the traditions of mass communication research and theory. The first section focuses on the importance of communication and sport and the challenges in getting respect for sports journalism. The second section focuses on influences on and the development of a research agenda on sports reporting. The focus section of the paper considers theoretical development and the challenges of finding an appropriate theoretical framework for the study of sports reporting and journalists. Here, research centered on cultivation theory, the hostile media effect, gender comparisons in coverage, the social construction of reality, agenda-setting and framing, and news gathering routines is considered. The article closes with a look ahead for communication and sport research.

In this essay, Raymond Boyle reflects on how the study of sport within media and communication studies has evolved in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. The first part of essay comments on the cultural importance of communication and sport. The second section traces the influences on the author’s research agenda, particularly in the area of sport journalism and the structural changes brought to it by digital media. Here, Boyle comments on the most influential scholars and works on communication and sport. The focus section of the essay considers the evolution of sport journalism and the changing role of sports journalists. In this section, the author considers the nexus of marketization, commercialization, and the internationalization of sport journalism and comments on the rise of public relations and the synergies between the sports industry and the entertainment industries. The focus section further considers the real and projected effects of digital journalism and the potential of citizen journalists to transform sport journalism. The essay closes with consideration of future research that will be needed to help us understand the cultural impacts of technological change on the role of sport journalism.

This essay highlights the unique and intimately interrelated nature of the relationship between communication and advertising by providing a selective overview of communication about and through sport within the context of promotional culture. While advertising and marketing of sport leagues, teams, celebrity athletes, and commodities are important, this treatment focuses on how the advertising industry has come to dominate contemporary social life, and why “sport” is such an important channel of communication within promotional culture. The article (a) outlines the emergence, nature, and social significance of advertising; (b) offers a framework for analysis based on the circuit of commodification and communication model that emphasizes the context and complex interrelationships between particular moments in commodification processes; (c) discusses a current research example examining sport, globalization, and corporate nationalism; and (d) considers directions for future research.

In this essay, Michael Messner focuses on a key part of a broader research agenda on gender and sport and reflects on the context and meanings of media characterizations of men and masculinities in the sport setting. The first part of the essay focuses on how one’s core identity as a male who grew up experiencing understandings of sport through the lens of media continues to be influenced by sensibilities that can conflict with revised beliefs about gender. The second part of the essay reflects on the author’s scholarly journey in focusing on gender and televised sport and the importance of extending one’s work beyond academia and into the public sphere. The focus section of the essay on “Men and Masculinities” examines four clusters of research on: (1) scandals and fallen heroes, (2) consumption of sports media as a male preserve, (3) sports, masculinities, politics, and war, and (4) female athletes as visible cultural icons. The essay closes with observations for future directions in research on gender, sport, and media.

In this essay, Toni Bruce considers key cultural and social issues at play in the relationship between mediated sport and women. The treatment reflects on over 30 years of research and assesses not only central tendencies and changes in the way media covers women’s sporting events and achievements but also considers how this coverage interplays with women’s sense of their place in and relationship to sport. The essay opens with core arguments about the cultural importance of the communication and sport intermix. The second section reflects on the author’s personal and scholarly journey with sport, touching on key themes and concerns in a gender- and sport-focused research agenda. The focus section “On Women and Femininities” considers diverse research from across the globe using different theoretical and methodological approaches. Highlighted in this section are research programs that illuminate the media’s central tendencies in covering women’s sports and the cultural and professional barriers to meaningful change. The closing section of the article focuses on the prospects for and challenges to change in the cultural discourses that media rely upon in framing understandings of women and sport.

In this essay, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj reflects on how heternormativity and gender identities have been characterized in sport media for more than a century. In light of these issues, Lenskyj reflects on why communication about sport may have particular importance in fueling heternormativity and a climate of homophobia. In reflecting on her journey as a scholar focused on the nexus of sport, gender, and media, Lenskyj notes that researchers have identified homophobia more readily than heterosexism, and lesbians’ experiences have been investigated in greater depth than those of gay men. The body of this essay focuses on trends in research, comments on the common perception that in sport “all the men are straight and all the women are gay,” considers heternormativity as social control, and assesses the potential of “the new muscular woman and the new metrosexual man” in the context of mediated sport. The conclusion focuses on more progressive trends in media treatment of sexuality issues in sport and considers both the standpoint and the key questions for future research.

In this essay, David Andrews examines the intriguing nexus of celebrity and race in the context of mediated sport. As a suggestive, rather than comprehensive examination of the study of sport, celebrity, and race, the treatment attempts to illuminate the derivation, complexities, and absences within this field of intellectual inquiry. After a brief discussion of why the relationship between communication and sport matters in social and cultural terms, insight is given to the author’s engagement with celebrity- and race-focused research. This is followed by a brief overview of the celebrity and race research, highlighting its genesis, major themes, and foci. Paying particular attention to the U.S.-based studies, this discussion provides a rationale for the intensification of sport, celebrity, and race research in the late 1980s and early 1990s, draws attention to studies representative of the major strands of inquiry, and highlights heretofore understudied areas. Finally, the prospects and directions for further inquiry on the nexus of celebrity and race in the context of mediated sport are briefly considered.

In this essay, Arthur Raney reflects on how decades of media scholarship have explored the importance of affective dispositions toward teams and contest outcomes to viewer enjoyment of live televised sport events. The introduction to the essay focuses on personal experiences that shaped his interests in understanding how spectator responses to mediated sport were culturally and psychologically significant. Raney reflects on his studies and collaboration with many of the scholars who were foundational in understanding how the role of affective disposition and enjoyment relates to sport media consumption. Throughout this essay, key themes emerging from empirical studies examining sports media enjoyment are identified. Further consideration is given to how new media technologies might impact sports enjoyment in the future.

In this essay, Walter Gantz reflects on the importance of communication and sport and the evolution of his research on fanship and social relationships. Cutting across two overlapping dimensions—physical location and technology—this essay characterizes key ways that sports fanship may be integrally linked with meaningful relationships. Sports viewing at home is often a shared activity, one that is far more likely to maintain or enhance existing relationships than isolate or annoy family members and create significant strife. Sports viewing during holidays can create special frustrations but these, too, seem easily addressed by family members. Out-of-home attention to mediated sports—from sports bars to the workplace—also has a strong social dimension as participants are able to share and affirm their fanship, at times at a cost to productivity. Social media and other interactive technologies (e.g., talk radio, smart phones, the Internet) facilitate sports-related expression and community. Research still needs to be conducted on the social dimension of sports fanship across the span of adult life.

In this essay, Lawrence Wenner reflects on the social and cultural importance of communication about sport. He considers the major influences on his research agenda and how the evolution of his research program came to change over time from one centered on empirical audience study to one anchored in critical and cultural studies. In a focus section on reading sport and narrative ethics, the constituent parts of a “dirt theory of narrative ethics” are framed and contextualized as a response to the increasing presses of commodification on sport-referential narratives. The essay closes with a look ahead for communication and sport research that encourages researchers to turn increasing attention to both institutional/organizational studies and audience studies in order to supplement our critical understandings of sport media texts and narratives.