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Abstract:Times of crisis impact the careers and brand management of athletes. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as the research context as we explore how athletes react, cope with, and respond to external disturbances through modifications in their personal brand management. We employed a qualitative approach, drawing on semi-structured interviews with elite athletes (N=15). The themes were verified by reviewing participants’ Instagram posts. The findings show that the COVID-19 context has created unique challenges for athletes’ careers and personal branding, including emotional distress, interruptions of athletic labor, and a void in the sports-related content they rely upon in their branding. Through emotional capital, coping, and identification of marketing opportunities, the athletes addressed the challenges, increasingly leveraging digital channels to preserve and expand their brand and remain relevant in the market. Findings have implications for athletes experiencing temporary career and brand-related interruptions such as during external disturbances, illness, pregnancy, or injury.

Scholars have been increasingly engaging with discourse analysis as theory and method. At its essence, this approach is centered around communicative acts, and thus is foundational to the study of sport media and communication. However, to our knowledge, no overview of the use of discourse analysis in sport, exercise, and physical education studies exists. Therefore, we conducted a structured scoping review by identifying 1892 papers in 277 journals from 2000 to April 2022, then narrowed the sample to 587 papers that specifically conducted a discourse analysis of sport. We sought to understand which theoretical traditions are commonly utilized, which sub-disciplines embrace discourse analysis with specific attention to communication, and how this approach can enrich and add to the methodological and theoretical development of media and communication studies in sport. Our review illustrated a heavy reliance on Foucauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis across a multitude of sport disciplines, though discourse analysis generally appears less frequently in sport communication journals. To advance our field’s use of discourse analysis, we suggest the need to emphasis a multimodal approach to discourse analysis, the integration of technology within this approach, and directions to theorize beyond dominant approaches to focus on mediated social interactions.

Research suggests that age and gender play important roles in motivation for and constraints to leisure time physical activity. Little research, however, has looked specifically at the perceptions and experiences of older men. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore leisure time physical activity and the ageing body from the perspectives of older men. Social cognitive theory was used to interpret the findings that emerged from constant comparison of in-depth interviews and follow-up focus groups with 15 men aged 60–70. The findings suggested that many participants modified their physical activity due to changing health status as well as external constraints such as time. For many men, however, awareness of their ageing body and value placed on health combined to motivate them to participate in intentional physical activity. Furthermore, those who viewed physical activity as enjoyable and beneficial, and/or viewed their identity as related to being active, were more likely to participate in regular leisure time physical activity. Findings provided insight into the experiences, perspectives and needs of older men related to physical activity and the ageing body.