Communication & Sport

There is a rise in athletes and sports organizations utilizing social media activism to discuss social injustices. Social media staff are tasked with communicating such messages, often with little insight into how it impacts their athletes. Empirical research is necessary to understand the perspectives of athletes to inform best practices for the staff. The purpose of this study was to assess college student-athletes’ perceptions of their athletic departments’ involvement in promoting racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement on social media. We surveyed 273 student-athletes from 40 universities for their perspectives. Quantitatively, we explored four factors: affective responses to the posts, perceived conflict, the role of the athletic department in using social media to discuss the topic, and the perceived qualifications of the athletic department to post about the topic. MANOVA revealed Black student-athletes were significantly more likely to believe that it was the athletic department’s role to address racial justice than their non-Black counterparts, with no significant differences in the other three factors. Qualitatively, student-athletes’ reactions were classified into three themes: social activism communication strategy, strategies to develop race conscious culture, and challenges to social media activism. Athletic department staff can utilize the findings to implement a strategy.

The distinct style of basketball popularly termed “streetball” is inextricably linked to Black bodies, spaces, and forms of expression. Although streetball operates as a Black cultural repertoire constituted in response to historical marginalization, I demonstrate how representations of streetball in mainstream media are underpinned by, and thus reify, harmful racial logics that circulate throughout even purportedly innocuous forms of popular culture in the “colorblind” neoliberal moment. Through a textual analysis of three of the most culturally renowned media representations of streetball—the television show AND1 Mixtape Tour, the video game series NBA Street, and the film Uncle Drew—I argue that streetball is depicted as illustrative of the perceived pathological and inferior nature of Blackness; romanticized and divorced from the structural contexts of its production; and materially and symbolically exploited by corporate commercial entities. I conclude by reflecting on how mediated commodification often participates in reproducing, trivializing, and concealing the effects of structural racism and suggest that critical analyses of the politics of popular culture must inform anti-racist objectives.

Professional athletes in the United States have protested racism in various ways for decades. Kneeling during the national anthem became a prominent form of such activism, ever since American football player Colin Kaepernick popularized the practice in 2016. “Anthem protests” gained renewed attention after the police killing of George Floyd and nationwide unrest in the summer of 2020. This article explores whether public approval of those protests was weaker than scholars and journalists suggested, because survey respondents were reluctant to admit that they considered the protesters disrespectful. A list experiment confirms hidden opposition to anthem protests, especially among people of color, who may feel heightened pressure to support racialized protesters. A second experiment reveals that social desirability bias persists even after respondents hear reassurance that nobody will judge their views. These findings indicate that mainstream surveys misrepresent attitudes toward contemporary racial issues, and that anthem protests have yet to gain wide acceptance in the general U.S. population.

This content analysis explores the world of the most mass-audience prizefighting events (i.e., boxing and mixed martial arts) over a recent five-year span in terms of social identity patterns related to the pursuit of positive distinctiveness. Specifically, social identity related to race/ethnicity is examined with regard to three categories of behavior associated with positive distinctiveness: (1) aggression, (2) ego-enhancement acts, and (3) embracing sociocultural cues. A number of positive distinctiveness behavior patterns were observed to be significant, indicating systematic differences in how these fighters chose to bolster their self-image and social identity as a function of racial/ethnic representation. Implications of observed patterns are discussed with reference to social cognitive theory, cultivation theory, and critical race theory.

The aim of this study was to examine discourses about race/ethnicity in Spanish football commentary, where this type of research is scarce. Previous research in other countries has found that football commentators tend to draw on racial/ethnic stereotypes when commenting on players. This, combined with the large audiences that televised football attracts, may contribute to the (re)production of racialized discourses. In this study, we conducted a content analysis of ten broadcasts of televised post-match Spanish football commentary, using an in-depth qualitative approach. We conceptualized race/ethnicity as a layered concept instead of the commonly used Black–White dichotomy, taking into consideration the complexity of racial/ethnic categories in the Spanish context. We didn’t find evidence for the reproduction of some dominant discourses; however, we did find evidence for the reproduction of some hegemonic discourses that reinforce an “us” vs. “them” discourse. In our discussion we place these results within the larger societal and historical context.

This study examines media discourses of the naturalized athletes of the South Korean men’s national ice hockey team. Building on the conceptual frameworks of imagined community, ethnic nationalism, and previous studies on athlete migration and naturalization, we further an understanding of the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of South Korean ethnic and national identity. We use Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to explore how South Korean media legitimized the naturalization of foreign athletes without Korean ancestry and suggest three themes found from the discourses. First, the discourses highlighted the significance of the South Korean team’s Olympic success, which provided a legitimate reason for the recruitment of foreign athletes. Second, the naturalized athletes were described as “saviors” who possessed superior careers, physicality, and playing skills. Lastly, the media complimented the naturalized athletes’ acculturation to Korean culture by emphasizing their commitment to the nation. We argue that by forming and distributing discourses that favored the naturalization of athletes, Koreans have expanded the boundary of Koreanness. We discuss, then, the expansion of Koreanness in relation to the notion of flexible citizenship in the era of neoliberal globalization.

Amidst a crisis in the US racial state over the summer of 2020, typically “politically” averse professional sports leagues proliferated anti-racist statements. We see the sudden advertising of corporate values and politics by sports leagues as stemming from the development of socially conscious marketing (SCM) in recent years. Marketers celebrate commercials such as Nike’s Dream Crazy (2019) since they amplify the political speech of activists, such as Colin Kaepernick, and advertise ways for consumers to engage in ethical consumption. Using discourse analysis of marketing literature on SCM and textual analysis of SCM commercials shown during sporting events, we show that SCM appropriates dissent against neoliberal capitalism in order to legitimate capitalism and resist systemic change during a moment of crisis. We conclude that while we can continue to expect professional sports leagues and other brands to appear “woke,” we should not expect to see change in the exploitative conditions that make them profitable.

The extractives industry (mining, quarrying, oil, and gas) engages in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to reinforce its organizational legitimacy and enhance its public image. One such approach to CSR that is popular in the industry is through funding sport initiatives aimed at improving the lives of Indigenous peoples, known as sport for development (SFD). Through the adoption of a settler colonial studies lens, and using netnographic methods and discourse analysis, we examined how three extractives companies portray their funding of SFD in Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia on social media, and the ways in which it contributes to settler colonialism. We determined that there are two main discourses that extractive companies use: i) Extractives companies “help” and “partner” with Indigenous communities to enable Indigenous youth’s access to the transformative power of sport; ii) longevity is strategically associated with such “help” and “partnership.” The production of these discourses enables extractives companies to downplay their contributions to settler colonialism through land denigration and colonial authority.

When asked if she would go to the White House if invited, Megan Rapinoe stated, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.” The next morning, President Donald Trump posted a series of tweets in which he criticized Rapinoe’s statements. In his tweets, Trump introduced issues around race in the United States and brought forth his own notion of nationalism. The purpose of this study was to conduct an analysis of users’ tweets to determine how individuals employed Twitter to craft a narrative and discuss the ongoing Rapinoe and Trump feud within and outside the bounds of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and nationalism. An inductive analysis of 16,137 users’ tweets revealed three primary themes: a) Refuse, Refute, & Redirect Racist Rhetoric b) Stand Up vs. Know your Rights, and c) #ShutUpAndBeALeader. Based on the findings of this study, it appears that the dialogue regarding racism in the United States is quickly evolving. Instead of reciting the same refrain (i.e., racism no longer exists and systematic racism is constructed by Black people) seen in previous works, individuals in the current dataset refuted those talking points and clearly labeled the President as a racist. Additionally, though discussions of nationalism were evident in this dataset, the Stand Up vs. Know Your Rights theme was on the periphery in comparison to discussions of race. Perhaps, this indicates that some have grown tired of Trump utilizing nationalism as a means to stoke racism.

Through developing the Sport Fan Sense of Community (SFSC) scale, this study examined the factors that would constitute a sense of membership in a sport fan community, the impact of these factors on behavioral and psychological outcomes of membership, and their influence on the creation and maintenance of social capital through membership in the sport fan community. Sport fans (N = 525) were surveyed and data were analyzed through a two-step confirmatory factor analysis and subsequent structural equation model analyses. A total of 17 items under five key factors were resulted for the SFSC scale, including Collective Unity, Positivity, Inclusivity, Social Opportunities, and Knowledgeable Members. These factors significantly (p < .05) contributed to the psychological outcomes related to cognitive and affective benefits, as well as behavioral outcomes of increased game attendance, merchandise sales, and positive word of mouth. An individual’s sense of membership in the fan community also contributed to his/her bridging and bonding of social capital. This study built on previous conceptualizations of sport fan communities and developed the SFSC scale to delineate, specify, and measure one’s sense of membership in a fan community. The findings help further the theoretical understanding of sport fan communities and also provide evidence for sport organizations to identify operational areas in which they can communicate with consumers in order to create, channel, and sustain stronger communities.