Sports and Communication

Sport Communication goes beyond scores and statistics, as scholars analyze sports’ role in culture and society. Communication scholars add insight to this growing field as they examine sport communication’s impact on race, gender and public policy.

Related Articles from Communication Currents

The Political Symbolism of Sports: George W. Bush and the Iraqi National Soccer Team

Smashing Stereotypes? Communicating Disability in Wheelchair Rugby

The Enduring Impact of Coach Messages

Selected Programs and Works from the 2009 Annual Convention

 

A League of its Own: Sport Consumption and the Reproduction of Social Class

Marissa Yandall, University of Denver

Drawing on Pierre Bordieu’s theorization of cultural capital and lifestyles, this essay locates meaning in both the practices and objects of sport consumption. This paper argues that both social identities and the meaning assigned to sport spectatorship are negotiated through consumption practices. The ways in which sport is consumed not only identifies a social hierarchy, but perpetuates the reproduction of social inequality.

 

 

Exploring Predictors of Sports Television Viewer Judgments of Athlete Anti-Social Behaviors

Adam Earnheardt, Youngstown State University

The extent to which television viewers are fans of sports and their motivation for viewing sports may impact judgments of athlete anti-social behaviors. Uses and gratifications theoretical framework guided exploration of possible predictors. The sample (n=347) consisted of undergraduate students. Fandom correlated significantly with motives for viewing televised sports, parasocial interaction, and identification. Fandom was negatively related to judgments of violent crime and uncharitable/dishonest behaviors. Implications of these are other results are offered.

 

From Jackie Robinson to Tiger Woods to Barack Obama? Rhetorical Links between the Myth of Meritocracy and American Political Culture 

Michael Butterworth, Bowling Green State University

During and after the 2008 presidential election, one of the theories that explained the popularity of Barack Obama was that the success of African American athletes had paved the way for the election of a black president.  It is fair to say that sport has contributed to improved race relations in the United States.  From Jack Johnson to Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali, black athletes have challenged and thus weakened the structures of racism that characterize American society.  Nevertheless, there is a popular perception that racism in baseball ended the day Robinson took the field or that the superstardom of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods provides evidence that African Americans have an equal chance to succeed on their own merits.  There is considerable risk, therefore, of ignoring the structural aspects of racism in favor of an idealized democratic narrative.  Accordingly, the argument that sport somehow facilitated the election of the nation’s “first black president,” merits rhetorical consideration.  In this paper, I wish to map the articulation of sport to the election of Barack Obama, thus spotlighting the disconnect between the myth of meritocracy and the persistence of racial inequalities.  As many observers already have noted, an Obama presidency is not a signal that the United States has now entered a “post-racial” society.  My argument, then, helps to explain the rhetorical means by which such a notion is advanced, while also offering a reconsideration of the mythology upon which it is premised.

Diversity in Race-ing: A Framing Analysis of the NASCAR Diversity Program
Issues of diversity have long been a critical concern for American organizations. The contemporary exemplar of the racing industry, the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR), has only relative recently begun to expand its efforts at creating diversity among drivers, crew members, and fans. This study analyzes media framing of this diversity program in order to better understand how organizations legitimize such programs in the eyes of their various publics.

From NCA’s Journals

Race in “The Race”: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Heroic Constructions of Whiteness

Michael L. Butterworth, Bowling Green State University

Critical Studies in Media Communication, Volume 24, Issue 3 August 2007 , pages 228 – 244

News media in the United States often present sports figures as ideal representations of heroism. In the U.S., heroism has long been linked to frontier mythology, which celebrates the rugged individualist. This figure privileges a construction of heroism based on strength, masculinity, and a white ideal associated with American exceptionalism. Accordingly, in affirming the promise of the American dream, sports media often devalue racial inclusion. To show how heroism in contemporary American culture is a mythological enactment of whiteness, I analyze news media accounts of the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

 

The Erotic Gaze in the NFL
Thomas P. Oates, Penn State University, New Kensington                                                Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1 March 2007 , pages 74 – 90
The National Football League (NFL) draft is an annual meeting where professional teams claim contract rights to college players. It has recently become a major media event, previewed extensively by scores of magazines, newspapers, and websites, and televised in its seventeen-hour entirety by ESPN. A critical reading of these discourses finds frequent expressions of desire for the bodies of draft prospects. The paper situates this homoerotic commentary in the historical context of American white supremacy in order to explain why the mostly black prospects are available for this kind of perusal and assessment, especially given the taboos against homosexual desire that suffuse the culture of elite football; while explaining how such practices affirm inter-male dominance based on a hierarchy of race by deploying the patriarchal strategies of the male gaze.

Radio Sports Talk and the Fantasies of Sport
Kenneth S. Zagacki and Dan Grano
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Volume 22, Issue 1, March 2005
Rhetorical analysis of radio talk shows in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, home of the Louisiana State University “Fighting Tigers” college football team, revealed that the talk shows gave Tiger fans opportunities to share creative interpretations of events. This helped them cope with moments of perceived crisis when the team lost, and solidified their identity as tied to regional pride and the values of work, race, and masculinity. The talk shows also promoted fantasies about college athletics, essentially designating the university's athletic tradition as the most important activity on campus. In this sense, radio sports talk helps blur the line between amateur and professional sports and oversimplifies the complex mission of higher education.

Muhammad Ali Versus the “Modern Athlete”: On Voice in Mediated Sports Culture
Daniel A. Grano, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Volume 26 Issue 3 August 2009 , pages 191 – 211
Through the example of the documentary film Ali Rap, this essay considers how longings for heroic voice that characterize contemporary sports culture are addressed through intertextual disembodiments and re-embodiments of voice that constitute the ideological commitments, passions, and distresses of sport. Voice, I argue, is vital to structuring moral fantasies in mediated sports culture, especially the idea that athlete-heroes can timelessly return to intervene in current political crises. Renderings of voice in artistic, prophetic, and spectral imagery are considered for their capacity to appropriate heroic images for political and moral needs.

Available Experts

Andrew C. Billings, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Clemson University, acbilng@clemson.edu

Paul D. Turman, Ph.D., Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, South Dakota Board of Regents, pault@sdbor.edu

Robert Krizek, Ph.D., Associate Professor, St. Louis University, krizekrl@slu.edu

Jennings Bryant, Ph.D., Professor, University of Alabama, jbryant@ua.edu