Search

Concussions are an important issue facing the short- and long-term health of athletes. News media play an important role in shaping public perceptions of concussions. However, such coverage often provides inaccurate information, disinformation, and/or trivializes concussions. To address the problem, the Concussion Legacy Foundation (CLF) provides workshops to teach journalists to responsibly report about concussions during live and post-competition coverage. Spearheaded by journalism instructors, the present study tested the effectiveness of the workshops through an experiment with 90 college journalism students. Students who completed the training showed improvement in scores on a "concussion in sport" literacy exam. They also performed better on the examination than students in a control condition. Results suggest the training is effective and could be standardized for those studying to work in the field of sports journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A national sample of 390 self-identified National Basketball Association (NBA) fans were asked motivational differences regarding use of four unique forms of social media information offerings: team-managed, media-managed, fanmanaged and player-managed outlets. While entertainment emerged as the top motivational factor across all four offerings, many significant differences were found among the four information offerings in relation to 12 key uses and gratifications. Revealing which information offerings users tend to use when attempting to fulfill a specific gratification, this study yields insights for academicians and sport practitioners, pinpointing distinctive features of different social media platforms to frame social media goals, as well as matching the perceived strengths and features of a particular platform and information offering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experiment aimed to examine emotional responses to athletic images featuring male and female athletes in 'gender-appropriate', 'gender-neutral', and 'gender-inappropriate' sports. Recruiting 236 subjects, this research has complex findings. The findings include – that when viewing pictures featuring male athletes, female subjects reported a significantly higher level of pleasure and arousal compared to their male counterparts; that regarding affective responses to different types of sports, male subjects reported the lowest level of pleasure and arousal in viewing athletes competing in 'gender-inappropriate' sports and that when viewing pictures featuring athletes competing in 'gender-inappropriate' sports, female subjects reported a significantly higher level of pleasure, arousal, and dominance than their male counterparts. Possible explanations and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to determine if perceptions of violence related to race, gender and sport will impact audience reactions to domestic violence issues involving an athlete. Specifically, this study will examine how these elements of an athlete's identity could affect his/her perceived image when faced with domestic violence accusations. A 3 (perceived race) X 2 (gender) X 2 (sport) factorial experiment was conducted using a national convenience sample of 626 participants from Qualtrics Panels. Results provided evidence that an athlete's race and gender could have an impact on their perception during domestic violence cases, with the male athlete (regardless of the race of the athlete) and the White athlete (regardless of the gender of the athlete) facing more negative perceptions. Furthermore, the violent nature of the sport did not have an impact on the perceptions of the athlete. This study provides further evidence about the role that gender and race play in how domestic violence is perceived during criminal transgressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of reputation management are negotiated in a wide array of contexts, yet arguably one of the most visible of these areas involves how such stories unfold within the sporting arena. Whether involving individual athletes, teams, organizations, leagues, or global entities, the process of navigating issues of image repair and/or restoration and crisis-based communication have never been more byzantine with a plethora of communicative media outlets functioning in myriad manners. This special issue of the Journal of Global Sport Management advances scholarship as it relates to the advancement of reputation in sports management contexts, specifically as it relates to crisis communication, image repair, and methods of modern apologia. 研究声誉管理问题需要考虑各种各样的背景因素, 而其中最重要的方面之一就是如何讲好发生在体育圈的故事。在如今传播媒体众多, 而且运作方式五花八门的背景下, 对运动员个体、团队、组织、联盟或全球体育实体来说, 修复或恢复声誉以及对危机进行沟通处理的过程都变得前所未有的复杂。本期《全球体育管理杂志》特刊推出体育管理中有关声誉提升的学术研究, 其中特别提到危机沟通、形象修复和现代辩解法等方面内容。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Global Sport Management is the property of the Global Alliance of Marketing & Management Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On April 29, 2013, Jason Collins became the first male to come out as gay as an active member in a professional team sport. This study examines two prongs of the media response to the Collins announcement, analyzing 364 newspaper articles and 7,556 tweets covering the first week of coverage of Collins’ decision to make his sexual orientation public. Results showed an overwhelmingly positive yet bifurcated response between the two media platforms. Comparisons between media platforms and ramifications for theory and the increasingly public role of sexual orientation are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Television is a cultural service and its national renderings of the Olympic Games contribute to the viewers’ understanding of themselves and the world. This study examines the representation of nationality and gender within Slovenian broadcasts of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Results show that evaluative commentary comprised as much as 44% of the dialogue. ‘Home’ athletes were given more prominence, while foreign athletes were largely portrayed through quantifiable features. Male athletes received more commentary than females. Announcers favoured analysing results and predicting outcomes for men, and resorted to personality and physicality depictions in women. A critical discourse analysis uncovered notions about gender and nationality that would be deemed inappropriate in many societies. Sports journalists and broadcasters at TV Slovenija do not have explicit editorial policies addressing chauvinistic dialogue. The absence of a policy is not perceived as an issue as individual announcers abide to their personal, at times conflicting, understandings of proper announcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used theories of agenda setting and framing to examine NBC's Americanized telecast in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Five sports (gymnastics, diving, swimming, track and field, and beach volleyball) received more than 90% of the prime-time coverage, which set an agenda about which sports were most relevant for Americans to watch. The limited scope within NBC's televised agenda, in turn, facilitated the gendered framing of Olympians through sport commentator accounts. Gendered differences were statistically present in only four sports; diving had no significant differences, whereas beach volleyball contained the most differences. Implications and directions for future research are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of all 348 prime-time hours of the 1996-2006 Olympic telecasts (three Summer, three Winter) pinpointed trends in coverage of men's and women's sports. Results indicate that while men athletes and events received the majority of clock time in all six Olympic telecasts, the Summer Olympic telecasts treated women far more equitably than the Winter Olympic telecast. The longitudinal study does not offer any reason to feel that coverage of women's athletics is improving over time, finding that the proportion of clock time devoted to men's and women's sports is relatively the same in 2006 compared to ten years earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three identity-oriented attributes of golfer Michelle Wie stand out: (a) her gender as a women playing against men, (b) her ethnicity/nationality as an Asian American, and (c) her very young age (and thus presumed inexperience). Previous studies of televised sports have nearly uniformly found announcers to denigrate female athletes as compared to male athletes and undervalue the achievements of ethnic minorities. This study looked at biases in televised commentary related to Wie's gender, age, and ethnicity and asked whether she was treated like other female golfers or more like male golfers. Results showed that although depictions of Michelle Wie were anomalous to any other gender or ethnic group, she more frequently fit characterizations of female and non-American golfers. Increased comments about her lack of experience also emerged when assessing potential age biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study which examines the hidden biases surrounding golfer Annika Sorenstam's play in the 2003 Colonial Golf Tournament. In the study researchers found patterns in which sportscasters and sportswriters frequently allude or explicitly refer to a female athlete's attractiveness, emotionality, femininity and heterosexuality. Researchers in the study compared and contrasted the 1994, 1996 and 1998 Olympic telecasts, finding that broadcasters made more comments about the attractiveness of women than they did about men athletes. The study findings suggest that in the world of sports, men and women have never been portrayed as being athletic equals. According to the researchers, an impressionable boy could become more likely to think he must focus on physical skills to survive, while a young girl could view internal factors as a way to overcome media conveyed inequities in physical strength. The amount of support for women's sports is also an important correlate for understanding the women's athletics.

Two key factors often influence the shaping of broadcast commentary: (a) if one of the teams portrayed is considered the sportscasters' `home' team and (b) if one of the teams is viewed to be the superior or `superstar' team. This analysis compares and contrasts these two factors by analyzing sportscaster portrayals of the United States 2002 World Cup team (`home' team) and the Brazilian 2002 World Cup team (champion/'superstar' team). Analysis of the preliminary games of both teams indicated that, while Brazil received a greater share of the comments about personality and creativity, the US team received the bulk of the overall commentary. Additionally, the US team was often portrayed as failing because of `bad luck' rather than lack of athletic skill or other more immediate factors. Discussion and directions for further research are articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]