Sports Communication 2015 Abstracts
Sport, Media Representations, and Domestic Violence: Ray Rice and the Truth Behind Closed Doors • Lauren Anderson, Florida State University • In February 2014, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was arrested for assaulting his then fiancé, Janay Palmer, at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City. Seven months later, TMZ released a video of the assault, which showed Rice punching Palmer in the face while inside an elevator at the casino. The public was immediately outraged, and thousands of fans took to social media to express their anger towards the running back. However, these attacks were just part of the conversation. The public outcry over the video generated a national conversation around intimate partner violence unlike anything seen before (Blow, 2014). With the purpose of discovering how domestic violence is talked about in sport, this paper examines the media coverage of the highly publicized Ray Rice incident over a one-year time span by examining articles from both mainstream and alternative media. The researcher argues that the main narratives surrounding the conversation seem to question previous media frames that have consistently blamed victims, excused perpetrators, and ignored the social problem of domestic abuse. Such narratives are crucial to changing the national conversation surrounding domestic violence. However, these narratives are relatively nonexistent in mainstream media, which is entirely problematic. Although the release of the TMZ video made the Ray Rice case one of the most publicized incidents of domestic violence in history, it still did not result in a national conversation about domestic violence among mainstream media.
The Return of the King: How Cleveland Reunited with LeBron After a Parasocial Breakup • Eryn Bostwick, The University of Oklahoma; Kathryn Lookadoo, The University of Oklahoma • This study examined the experiences northeast Ohio residents had when LeBron James left Cleveland in 2010 and returned in 2014. Results showed individuals who experienced a parasocial relationship (PSR) with LeBron were more likely to experience a parasocial breakup (PSB), which, in turn, was positively related to having feelings of grief after LeBron left. The results help explain why some fans might react negatively when finding out their favorite player has left their favorite team.
Second Screen & Sports: A Structural Investigation into Team Identification and Efficacy • Nicole Cunningham, University of Texas at Austin; Matthew Eastin, University of Texas at Austin • A second screen is defined as a second electronic device used by audience members while watching a television program. While second screen use during sport programming is on the rise, current theoretical understanding of second screen use and engagement is lacking. Thus, in an attempt to extend Niche Theory and Social Cognitive Theory, the current study employs a structural equation model to increase current understanding of second screen use. Further, to better understand the outcome of second screen use, the current study examines the relationship between team identification, engagement, and self-efficacy with second screen use.
Altering the Attribute Agenda: How the Suspension of a Rugby Star Impacted Coverage of Doping • Bryan Denham • This study examined how the 2010 suspension of rugby player Terry Newton, who tested positive for human growth hormone, impacted drug-testing reports in United States news media. Drawing on the agenda-setting concept of a “trigger event,” as well as research in attribute agenda-building, the study observed an increase in references to human growth hormone following the suspension announcement. Substantively, the study refutes criticism that American journalists advance the interests of U.S. athletes and athletic organizations while largely ignoring athletes and sport entities elsewhere.
The Use Of Twitter As A News Source In Sports Reporting • Brian Dunleavy, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Tim Vos, University of Missouri • It has been well documented that professional athletes have been using Twitter to communicate directly with each other and their fans; to date, few studies have explored the effect this direct communication channel has had on the role of journalists who cover these athletes. Traditionally, sports reporters have served in a gatekeeping role, deciding what news and information is worthy of coverage on the beat. The present study sought to assess how, if at all, sports reporters covering the four major U.S. sports—baseball, basketball, football, and hockey—are using athletes’ Twitter feeds in their coverage and what, if any, impact athletes’ presence on Twitter has had on their role as gatekeepers. A search of eight daily newspapers during a one-month period yielded a total of 74 articles in which an athletes’ Twitter feed was used as a news source. A textual analysis of these articles revealed that athletes’ tweets are used in place of direct quotes, as a source of breaking news, as the genesis of a story, and to gauge public sentiment toward an athlete. Interviews with 20 of the sports reporters covering the four major sports at the eight newspapers and five of the editors at these outlets confirmed these uses. Respondents also acknowledged that Twitter has enabled athletes to communicate directly with their fans without involving the traditional sports media. However, most the respondents also noted that the limitations of the medium kept their roles as reporters relevant to the fan/reader.
Thrice-trending Twitter: A Longitudinal Study of Sports Journalist Tweeting • Betsy Emmons, Samford University • Sports journalists have accepted Twitter as an important tool in live reporting. Sports journalists are particularly in tune with Twitter’s role as a second screen during a live televised event. The news ecology model framework offers a longitudinal frame for this research, a three-year content analysis of journalist live-tweeting. Results indicated that there were significantly different tweet tendencies between bloggers and institutional journalists, with movement toward homogeneity and sporadic use of other Twitter aspects.
To tweet and retweet: How NFL journalists gatekept the Ray Rice scandal on Twitter • Patrick Ferrucci, University of Colorado-Boulder • This study utilizes textual analysis to examine how journalists covered the Ray Rice scandal on Twitter. The study looked at all tweets concerning the scandal from 20 “elite” sports journalists. It was found that journalists used Twitter when covering the scandal in four primary ways: to disseminate factual information, to state opinions, to make followers laugh and to self-promote themselves. These findings are then analyzed through the lens of gatekeeping theory. It is suggested that news organizations need to develop and implement strong social media policies because Twitter coverage could conceivably result in negative effects on the organization.
The big assist: Exploring nonprofit beliefs about the benefits and challenges of sport CSR • Melanie Formentin, Towson University • Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in professional sport is studied almost exclusively in business and marketing where sport is presented as having unique characteristics for creating social impacts. Additionally, CSR scholarship generally fails to address beneficiary perspectives of giving impacts. Using 29 depth interviews with nonprofit practitioners, this study highlights perceived benefits and challenges of working with sport organizations. Findings suggest sport CSR has unique qualities, but not to the degree expressed in current research.
Mobile Communication and Pro Sports: Linking Motivational Use of the Mobile Phone to Fan Loyalty • Seok Kang • The main focus of the current study is fan loyalty development for favorite pro teams through mobile phone use. Guided by uses and gratifications theory, varying motive types are assumed to be potential predictors for attitudinal, behavioral loyalty, and sport fandom. Reflecting traits of mobile communication, mobile competence and network size are also taken into account in the examination. From a national panel survey of 405 respondents, the results found that mobile phone use was classified into either instrumental or ritualistic motives. Goal-directed interaction motives predicted behavioral loyalty and sport fandom. Habitual motives were associated with attitudinal loyalty. Mobile competence was a positive indicator for attitudinal loyalty and sport fandom. Second-level digital divide was discovered in mobile phone use for attitudinal loyalty and sport fandom. No significant relationship between network size and fan loyalty was observed. Related implications and suggestions were discussed.
The effects of camera angle, arousing content and fanship on the cognitive processing of sports messages. • Collin Berke, Texas Tech University; Justin Keene, Texas Tech University; Brandon Nutting, University of South Dakota • This study had two core motivations. First, the replicate the previous research related to the relationship between camera angle, arousing content, general sports fanship and resource allocation, and second, to reconceptualize these message-level elements from the human-centered perspective. Generally, the results replicate previous findings that arousing content, but not fanship, school identification or camera angle effects the availability of cognitive resources over time. Implications are discussed.
The Team versus Its Fans: Crisis Frames Using Social Media in the case of Ray Rice • Eunyoung Kim, University of Alabama • This study examines how sports organizations and their fans use the interactivity of Twitter to disseminate crisis frames. Conducting a content analysis in the Ray Rice case, the study compares crisis frames employed by the Baltimore Ravens and by self-identified fans and examined the tones, topics, and frames of fans’ responses. The results illustrate that the team and fans utilized human interest, conflict, and athletic frames in common and different ways.
Nationalism in the United States and Canadian Primetime Broadcast Coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics • James Angelini; Paul MacArthur, Utica College; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Lauren Smith, Auburn University • The CBC’s and NBC’s primetime broadcasts of the 2014 Winter Olympics were analyzed to determine differences between the media treatment of home nation athletes and foreign athletes. Results showed that Canadian athletes represented 48.5% of the total athlete mentions and 100 percent of the top 20 most mentioned athletes on the CBC broadcast, while American athletes represented 43.9% of the total mentions and 65 percent of the top 20 most mentioned athletes on the NBC broadcast. The Canadian broadcast also featured home athletes significantly more than the American broadcast. The CBC was more likely attribute Canadian athletic successes to commitment and intelligence, and non-Canadian successes to strength; Canadians were more likely to have failure ascribed to a lack of consonance, while non-Canadians were more likely to have failure ascribed to a lack of commitment. The CBC was also more likely to discuss neutral/other comments for Canadians, and the extroversion and background of non-Canadians. NBC was more likely to attribute non-American failures to experience and non-American failures to a lack of concentration. NBC was also more likely to describe non-American athletes as modest/introverted. Comparisons between the CBC and NBC revealed 35 significant differences in the manner in which they depicted home athletes compared to athletes from other nations.
Inequivalency of Trangressions: On-Field Perceptions of Off-Field Athlete Deviance • Coral Marshall; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama • Deviance and crime have long been considered newsworthy, yet recently the off-field deviant actions of professional athletes have received increased prominence. Utilizing 360 subjects from a national online experiment, this paper examines the degree to which these off-field deviant actions effect fan perceptions. Results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in the way types of violence are perceived.
‘I did what I do’ vs ‘I cover football’: Team media and athlete protest • Michael Mirer, University of Wisconsin • As athletes added their voices to the 2014 protests of police violence, team media were part of the press pack. Using interview data and content analysis, this case study examines the way writers at team sites approached this collision of marketing and political activism. It finds a range of approaches, from full stories to ignoring it, often justified with similar claims of reportorial independence. These findings complicate existing views of team media.
Divorce in Sports: Enduring Grief and the Fluidity of Fandom • Nathan Rodriguez, University of Kansas • Many scholars conceptualize fans as static, with concretized likes or dislikes. Less discussed is what happens when the majority of fans experience an act of perceived disloyalty. This project examines online comments from college basketball fans regarding a former head coach over an eight-year period. Comments are coded using the Kubler-Ross model to document how fans process grief over time. This approach lends explanatory power to better understand fluidity of fandom over time.
‘How Could Anyone Have Predicted that #AskJameis would Go Horribly Wrong?’ Public Relations, Social Media, and Hashtag Hijacking • Jimmy Sanderson, Clemson University; Katie Barnes, Clemson University; Christine Williamson, Clemson University; Edward Kian, Oklahoma State Univeristy • Social media offers benefits to organizations when enacting public relations. However, it also is accompanied with risk as the participatory culture of social media enables audience members to actively contribute to public relations narratives. This research explores how a sport public relations campaign on Twitter can be hijacked by audiences through an investigation of the #AskJameis campaign employed by Florida State University. Winston had been the subject of several legal incidents before Florida State made him available to answer questions via the #AskJameis hashtag on August 10, 2014. A thematic analysis of 1,247 tweets revealed that the hashtag was hijacked primarily through: (a) criticizing Florida State University; (b) referencing Winston’s legal incidents; (c) general sarcasm; (d) insinuating Winston received preferential treatment; and (e) mocking Winston’s intellect. The results suggest that public relations campaigns enacted on social media extend well beyond target audiences and that public relations personnel must account for the anticipated “pulse” of the audience before launching public relations initiatives on social media. Underestimating the capabilities of the social media audience can further exacerbate crisis situations, suggesting that there are occasions when not using social media is a more effective public relations practice.
Soccer as un-American Activity: Sportswriters Inscribing American Exceptionalism on the World’s Game • David Schwartz, University of Iowa • Disapproving of the soccer strategy known as flopping—falling down on purpose—Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander wrote that flopping is “a European or South American or Asian or African affectation. And it’s pitiful.” Through textual analysis of American sports writing, this description and others illustrate how sportswriters advance American exceptionalism and disparage foreign athletes by locating flopping outside the moral and ethical boundaries of sportsmanship.
#deflategate: Sports Journalism, Twitter and the Use of Image Repair Strategy • Mary Lou Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi; Brad Schultz, University of Mississippi; Willie Tubbs, University of Southern Mississippi • “This study investigated how different groups of sports journalists covered the NFL “deflategate” scandal through social media, specifically in terms of employing image repair strategies. A content analysis revealed that while many journalists employed objective reporting, many others engaged in a variety of repair strategies, notably minimization and stonewalling. Discussion and implications focused on two main issues—conflict of interest between journalists and sports organizations, and the evolving role of social media in crisis coverage.”
ABC’s Wide World of Sports: The Cultural and Industrial Politics of Cold War Sports Television in the United States • Travis Vogan, University of Iowa • The Cold War provides the backdrop for many of the United States’ most durable sporting tales. The medium of television played a key role in articulating sport’s relationship to the Cold War. Scholars of sport, however, have mostly ignored the medium’s significance to Cold War sport. Focusing on a series of televised track meets between the USA and USSR from 1961-1965, this historical essay uses the ABC network’s anthology program Wide World of Sports to consider how sports TV mediated U.S. sport’s relationship to Cold War politics. It does so through examining a combination of Wide World of Sports’ programs, popular and trade press commentary on them, and discourses from ABC personnel. Moreover, it argues that Wide World of Sports’ many representations of Cold War sport helped ABC to establish a branded identification with sports programming and to compete for market share of the increasingly popular genre with CBS and NBC.
#ClipperNation: A Case Study of the Functional Uses of Social Media for Sport Public Relations • Brandi Watkins, Virginia Tech • The rapid growth of sports as a PR specialization, there are considerably fewer academic studies that examine the field within the discipline. An attempt to contribute to the need for research in this area, this study applies the functional uses of social media for PR to a sports context. A case study of the Twitter activity of the Los Angeles Clippers revealed the team used Twitter to serve the organizational identification and relationship building functions.
The Effects of Second-Screen Use on the Enjoyment of the Super Bowl • Jordan Dolbin, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Brendan R. Watson • To optimize the second screen experience, it is important to understand how media multitasking affects the primary experience, in this instance, watching the Super Bowl. This study surveyed a randomly-sampled young adults who watched the Super Bowl on TV. The study examines the effects of the frequency of general second-screen use; related versus unrelated second-screen use; and the effect of difference between gratifications sought by watching the Super Bowl and reasons for using a second-screen on enjoyment of watching the game. While frequency of second-screen use is negatively associated with enjoyment, related second-screen use is a positive predictor. However, the greater the differences, related or unrelated to the game, between the reasons why someone watched the game and used a second screen, the lower levels of enjoyment. Implications for theory and the television and sports industries are discussed.
Televised CrossFit Competitions Have the Potential to (Tire)Flip Masculine Hegemony on Its Head • Molly Yanity, Quinnipiac University; Mary Haines, Ohio University • While feminist theory has expressed a wide range of opinions and findings on the mediation of the muscular female body, we draw principally from Connell’s theory of gender power relations to analyze televised CrossFit competitions on ESPN. The purpose of this article is to compare and analyze dominant themes from similar findings to those of the CrossFit competition broadcasts to determine if these competitions have the potential to disrupt or sustain masculine hegemony on the existing sport-media landscape.
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