Sports Communication 2012 Abstracts
Faculty
Digital Touchdown?: An Examination of Audience’s Multiplatform Experience during the 2012 Super Bowl • Tang Tang, University of Akron; Roger Cooper, Ohio University • The 2012 Super Bowl was the most watched television program in U.S. television history, and represented a wide-scale expansion to online and digital environments. This study examined audience’s multiplatform experience with the 2012 Super Bowl. Results indicate that traditional television was still the dominant medium for Super Bowl viewing.
Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Prestige Newspaper Coverage of Joe Paterno and the Penn State Scandal • Paul Husselbee, Southern Utah University • This paper analyzes newspaper coverage of Joe Paterno’s actions after Jerry Sandusky’s arrest for alleged sex crimes against children at Penn State University. It also analyzes antapologia and valence in response to Paterno’s apologetic statement just hours before he was fired as Penn State’s football coach. Findings are consistent with previous studies on newspaper coverage and antapologia, with one shocking difference: Journalists portrayed Paterno’s actions and statement significantly more unfavorably than neutral or favorably.
The Vancouver “Big Six” Gender-Framed: NBC’s Primetime Coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics • James Angelini, University of Delaware; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Paul MacArthur, Utica College • This study represents the first attempt to content-analyze on-air commentary surrounding the six “major” Winter Olympic sports, operationalized as any event receiving at least three hours of aggregate primetime coverage. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC’s primetime coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games revealed 26 significantly-different dialogue trends between men and women athletes. Interestingly, events such as figure skating featured many gender differences, while bobsled, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding had none.
New Playing Grounds: How Sport Was Reconceptualized for U.S. Television in the 1960s • Tara Kachgal, University of Wisconsin-Superior • The 1960s have been called the “Golden Age” of U.S. sports television. Sports anthology series (i.e., magazine programs) such as CBS Sports Spectacular, ABC’s Wide World of Sport, and NBC Sports in Action served to codify many of the aesthetic, narrative, and technical conventions that would later exemplify the presentation of TV sport.
Money Changes Everything: Sports Journalists and England’s Barclays Premier League • Danielle Sarver Coombs, Kent State University; Anne Osborne, Louisiana State University • This paper seeks to understand the perceptions and experiences sports reporters tasked with covering Premier League sides. These football journalists describe limited access brought on by the clubs’ decisions to emphasize global brands and manage their own content through club-run websites and material. Respondents also perceive this limited access is exacerbated by a growing culture of suspicion that widens the gulfs between teams and the reporters who cover them.
College Athletes’ Perception of Social Media Use • Mary Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi; Brad Schultz; Lyndie Bishop • In an age where more athletes are using the social media, more schools struggle to control or monitor those media messages. Social media gives athletes a unique and unfiltered platform to present their image to a vast audience of sports fans and consumers. Although some universities have begun to implement social media policies, in many instances athletes’ awareness or comprehension of the use of social media remains opaque. A university’s image can be quickly tarnished by student athletes’ inappropriate social media use and can lead to serious sanctions by the NCAA.
Beyond Getting Your Bell Rung: Framing of Sport-Related Concussion Coverage Between 2007 and 2012. • Lesa Major; Matthew Zimmerman; Lauren Burch • This study gauges how the issue of sport-related concussion is being discussed in the public arena by examining five years of news coverage about the National Football League and the National Hockey League from The New York Times, USA Today, and ESPN.com. This research records the presence of the frames – problem definition, cause, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation, and determines whether these frames are presented as thematic or episodic.
Closing the gender gap?: A framing analysis of high school basketball coverage • Erin Whiteside, University of Tennessee; Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, University of Tennessee, Knoxville • This research uses a content analysis to explore how high school male and female athletes are framed in newspapers. In analyzing basketball coverage from 141 unique newspapers, results show that although boys received the bulk of the coverage, the gap in parity may be closing when it comes to preps sports coverage. Furthermore, girls were generally not framed as feminine. Still, there were key differences in coverage, most notably in references to the athletic body.
Which team do you play for? A social identity study of sports and news journalists and the coverage of athletes who commit crimes. • Vincent Filak; Scott Reinardy, University of Kansas • Using the lens of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), we examined the attitudes of sports and news journalists in regard to the coverage of athletes who have committed crimes. This study of 275 journalists revealed patterns of intergroup bias. News journalists were more likely to agree that crime was an important part of the paper’s overall coverage. In addition, both sports journalists and news journalists felt reporters within their social group were better equipped to cover stories involving athletes and crime.
Do Celebrity Endorsements Work? Exploring Effective Strategies of Banner Advertisement in Sport Websites • Woo-Young Lee, University of Central Missouri; Minjung Sung, Chung-Ang University • Sport is a fixture of American culture. The fusion of sport, media, and advertising lend growing importance to managing the attitudes of consumers. Scholars have made a tremendous devotion to researching effective advertising strategies for online sport marketing. However, a limited number of studies have focused exclusively on sport celebrity endorsement and related congruity in online advertising. The current study applied MANCOVA testing to produce definitive results.
Television Sports and Social TV: The Courtship Continues • John Shrader, California State University, Long Beach • Television is challenged by the digital revolution in a number of ways. Live television sports is no exception. Consumers expect the product in a number of platforms, and the producers of live sports television provide it in a number of platforms. One of the latest and greatest challenges – and opportunities – for the announcers of live sports television is social media. It wasn’t long ago that the announcers were the viewers’ primary source for in-game information.
Contrasting Desired Sports Journalism Skills in a Convergent Media Environment • Stan Ketterer, Oklahoma State University; John McGuire, Oklahoma State University; Ray Murray, Oklahoma State University • This research study considered how desired job skills for future newspaper sports reporters and television sports reporters are merging in the convergence journalism era. Using open-ended responses given by newspaper sports editors and television sports directors around the country, the researchers employed Spearman’s Rho to contrast results. While no significant correlation could be found between top individual top skills listed by newspaper sports editors and television sports directors, significant correlation was found contrasting the top 10 desired skills.
Performing the “Good Negro Athlete” in Mid-Century America: Three Case Studies • Phillip Hutchison, University of Kentucky • This historical-critical analysis employs Raymond Williams’ theories of hegemony to examine the performative aspects of the Good Negro Athlete stereotype from 1947-1962. The study examines how white interests used the stereotype to define the social personas of three African American heavyweight champion boxers during this period. These cases illustrate how white promoters and journalists used the persona to synchronize America’s commercial leisure industry with postwar America’s racial hierarchies.
Student
When Fan Identification Levels Go Extreme: An Exploratory Study of the Highly Identified Fans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship • Natalie Brown, University of Alabama; Michael Devlin, University of Alabama; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • The current study examined the implications of fan identity as it related to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), more specifically, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The authors examined differences in levels of fan identification towards individual athletes compared to the UFC organization. An online survey yielded 911 respondents who were representative of the UFC’s current audience demographics. Results showed significant differences in fan identify between gender, age, and sensation-seeking behaviors.
The Paradox of Player Safety: Media Constructions of Violence in the NFL • Jacob Dittmer, University of Oregon • The NFL’s concussion crisis and pending litigation has revealed a paradox in the promotion of football. The popularity of the NFL derives from media myth constructions of warrior players and dominant narratives focusing on violence. Yet the official response to the concussion crisis, epitomized in the NFL Evolution campaign, promotes a narrative of a league dedicated to a safe working environment for its players. This paper examines the dynamics of the paradox of player safety.
Exploring Situational Crisis Communication Theory: Using the 2011 NBA lockout to investigate crisis response strategies • Melanie Formentin, The Pennsylvania State University • Using the National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout as an example, this study reports the results of a 3×2 experiment examining whether accommodative or defensive strategies are more successful at changing perceptions of blame and preserving reputation during a crisis. The study was grounded in situational crisis communication theory, and results suggest that crisis response strategies may impact perceptions of fault during a crisis but perceptions of fault did not significantly impact the NBA’s reputation.
More than Just a Pretty Face? Examining the Influence of Attractiveness and Reporter/Athlete Congruity on Perceived Credibility • Dustin Hahn, Texas Tech University, College of Mass Communication; Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University College of Mass Communications • Research examining source credibility in mass communication has demonstrated how source’s gender and attractiveness can impact perceived credibility and, subsequently, how well messages are received. This experiment extends these findings to the context of mediated sports by examining them in conjunction with athlete gender. Although source attractiveness and gender appear to have no influence, data gleaned from this experiment demonstrate that these relationships are actually dependent upon incongruity with athlete gender.
The Effects of Fantasy Football Participation on Team Identification, Team Loyalty and NFL Fandom • Jeremy Lee, Florida State University; Brody Ruihley; Natalie Brown, University of Alabama; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • An estimated 35 million people in North America participated in fantasy sport in 2011. This study examines how participation levels in fantasy football affect team identification, team loyalty, fandom of the National Football League (NFL), and consumer behavior. Survey results indicate higher fantasy participation levels leading to higher team identification, higher team loyalty, and higher fandom, where fandom of the NFL is higher than team identification.
Ain’t it so? “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, collective memory, and the shaping of an American hero • Brett Borton, University of South Carolina • Joe Jackson has long been regarded as one of the greatest hitters in the history of Major League Baseball with an average of .356 during his career with the Chicago White Sox .Yet Jackson will forever be remembered for his alleged participation in the fix of the 1919 World Series – in which the highly favored White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds – and subsequent lifetime ban from baseball by commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis.
Defense! Or you will Lose Your Fans! NFL and MLB Team’s Fan Relationship Management on Facebook • Dong Hoo Kim; Eun Sook Kwon; Young-A Song • The sports business is one of the largest industries in the world and its economic value continues to grow. Due to the important role of fans in the sports industry, building strong relationships with fans is vital for the industry, league, and team. A total of 37 official Facebook fan pages of NFL and MLB teams are investigated by employing Stafford and Canary’s relationship maintenance strategies (RMS).
Local or National?: An examination of fans’ perceptions of college football scandal coverage • Molly Yanity, Ohio University; Ashley Furrow, Ohio University • Two and a half years ago, we researchers surveyed college football fans to learn where they go for college sports scandal coverage and what factors they consider in making the decision to turn to local or national sources. Given the onslaught of college football scandals that have shaken the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its fans in the last two and a half years, we redistributed the survey.
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