Politics in Sports Media
CSCM publishes its Politics in Sports Media report annually, beginning in 2022. This comprehensive study of sports media content in the United States captures a range of audience perceptions and details critical issues in sports media. With this report, CSCM defines politics broadly, focusing on the ways power and resources are acquired, distributed, and limited in and around sports in the United States. Thus, researchers are interested in both formal political contexts, such as elections and legislative debates, and the equally important deliberations concerning race, gender, sexuality, class, labor, economic development, the environment, and more. Authors also retain a focus on “mainstream sports media,” meaning that interests are attending to electronic and broadcast outlets with the widest reach. “Politics in Sports Media” defines “politics” expansively to include references to campaigns, elected officials, and legislation as well as matters of power, resources, and equity. The relationship between sports and politics is neither new nor temporary and CSCM plans to issue this report each January.
Olympic and Paralympic Analysis
CSCM has collaborated with the Center for Comparative Politics & Media Research at Bournemouth University in the UK to produce two reports, chronicling recent Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Digital publications from 2020 and 2024 both feature essays from over 100 contributors from leading institutions around the world. Authors provide authoritative analysis of the Olympics and Paralympics, including research findings and new theoretical insights. Contributions come from a rich array of disciplinary influences, including media, communication studies, education, kinesiology, history, sociology, political science, and psychology. These publications capture the immediate thoughts, reflections, and insights from the Tokyo and Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games from the cutting edge of academic scholarship. The report is free to download and can be deposited in any repository or library.
Both reports include essays amongst the following sections.
Section 1: Section 1: Host City & Mega-Events
Section 2: Media Coverage & Representation
Section 3: Performance & Identity
Section 4: Fandom & National Identity
Section 5: Politics of Sport
Academic communities on sports, communication and culture
The last ten years has seen a veritable explosion of scholarly interest in the role sports plays in communicating and mediating cultural dynamics in the society at larger, least of all around issues of race, gender, money, drugs and violence. Today's scholars are building upon a generation of academic research, investigation and writing to make sense of our circumstances. The resources below offer points of entry to these scholarly communities.
Communication and Sport
International Association for Communication and Sport
The International Association for Communication and Sport is a membership-based organization that will be holding its 11th Summit on Communication and Sport at Indiana University on April 26-29, 2018.
National Communication Association
The National Communication Association advances Communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry. The Communication and Sport Division of NCA welcomes all scholarly, pedagogical, and service-related endeavors pertaining to connections between communication practices and their relationship to sport and all it encompasses.
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
The Sports Communication Interest Group was established in 2010. SPORTS is designed to support AEJMC members who are scholars and teachers of sports-related courses, including those in the areas of journalism, broadcasting, advertising/marketing and sports information/public relations with a balanced agenda that focuses on teaching, scholarship and issues of professional freedom and responsibility
International Communication Association
ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. ICA's Sport Communication Interest Group studies how communication processes influence sport as well as how sport influences communication processes. Work from all methodologies and epistemological views are welcomed.
Broadcast Education Association
The Broadcast Education Association is the premiere international academic media organization, driving insights, excellence in media production and career advancement for educators, students and professionals. The purpose of BEA’s Sports Division, established in April 2008, is the improvement of teaching, the fostering of research in sports broadcasting and electronic media and the networking of faculty and professionals interested in sports broadcasting and electronic media. To this end, the Sports Division provides a forum for the exchange of teaching techniques and materials and the presentation of juried and non-juried scholarly research and creative activity.
American Studies Association
The American Studies Association's Sports Studies Caucus creates a legible place in the academy for scholars interested in critically considering the roles sports play in American culture. Possessing a diversity in critical methodologies that is both inclusive and illuminating, the members of the Sports Studies Caucus are dedicated to a consideration of sport that relates to issues of broader relevance: enriching and deepening connections between work of caucus members and the work of its not-so-sports-inclined colleagues.
Communication & Sport
Communication & Sport (C&S) is a cutting-edge, peer-reviewed quarterly journal that publishes research to foster international scholarly understanding of the nexus of communication and sport. C&S publishes research and critical analysis from diverse disciplinary and theoretical perspectives to advance understanding of communication phenomena in the varied contexts through which sport touches individuals, society, and culture.