Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study explored how nationalism was perpetuated by the Seven Network’s broadcasting of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games during a time, in which much of Australia was in various forms of Covid-19 lockdowns. Self-categorization theory was used to analyze all the primetime coverage of the Seven Network’s main channel for name mentions, description of success or failure, and personality and physicality of the Olympians. Results of this study underscore large differences in the way in which the Seven Network portrayed Australian and non-Australian athletes. Whilst the majority of the top-20 most-mentioned athletes list were Australian, non-Australian athletes received the bulk of the name mentions. There were also differences in the ways in which Australian and non-Australian athletes’ success and failure were portrayed. This study contributes to the literature by uncovering how a major sporting event was covered by a national broadcaster during the Covid-19 pandemic and shows that Australian media catered its coverage to its home audience, who were in lockdowns. Thus, interest and viewership of the Tokyo Olympics was high, which might have been the impetus for the Seven Network to create a largely partisan program.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Sports-related online abuse has evolved into an inevitable issue and even those athletes and teams honored as national icons cannot be exceptional. This study explores how exposure to abusive content on social media affects sports fans’ behavior. More specifically, the researchers draw from social psychology and exam the rejection-identification model with fans’ team identity and hate for rival teams as parallel competitive mediators in the context of online abuse in sports. Using a sample comprising 917 fans of the Chinese Women’s National Volleyball Team (CWV), the study suggested that exposure to online abuse is linked to a decrease in fans’ intention to create content and advocate for their teams on social media. However, the identification with their idol and hatred towards the opposing groups are evidenced to buffer negative behavioral impacts, revealing an effective psychological mechanism among fans. These findings shed light on the dual psycho-behavioral impacts of online abuse on sports fans and provide practical implications for addressing online incivility and mitigating its toxic effects on sports communication and management.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examines the public’s perceptions of a speech delivered by FIFA’s president in a press conference one day before the Qatar 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. In total, 34,714 publicly available user responses were collected from news media YouTube channels in North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as from Twitter hashtags related to the press conference. This user-generated content was analyzed using sentiment analysis to determine the degree of positivity or negativity, followed by qualitative thematic analysis to identify specific factors influencing public perceptions of Infantino’s speech, including both positive and negative aspects. The results suggested that FIFA’s communication was “debated” due to questions and challenges posed by the public. It is noted, however, that the magnitude of negative and positive evaluations varied according to the medium used and the region. Negative evaluations related to ‘hypocrisy’, ‘lack of transparency’, and ‘diplomatic hedging’, whereas positive evaluations related to ‘symbolic communication’, ‘activist governance’, and ‘cultural appropriateness’. Using the public as a resource for institutional evaluation, this research contributes to the scholarship of sport management by analyzing the impact of communication on an organization’s moral legitimacy.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This paper analyses news media coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic skateboarding competition, which paid significant and celebratory attention to the extraordinary youth of the medallists in the women’s disciplines. The coverage was marked by a postfeminist sensibility that constituted the girl-child skater via a ubiquitous and enduring girl power discourse, and idealised them as sites of extraordinary feminine capacity. These narratives located girls’ success in their exceptional youth, market potential, and personal agency, reinforcing neoliberal norms which privilege individualism, entrepreneurialism and choice. However, while offering the girl athletes as testaments to feminist progress in a historically male sport and culture, news narratives tended to render girls’ athletic labour virtually invisible and to elide larger issues that may impact women skaters and girl-aged elite athletes. This paper addresses a call for further attention to postfeminist sensibility as it manifests in contemporary media coverage of women’s sport in order to understand the kind of contradictions that can manifest in media narratives that simultaneously celebrate women’s achievements while denying the existence of larger structural issues affecting them. Additionally, it addresses a gap in feminist sport media research that has largely overlooked the girl-child elite athlete.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This paper seeks to understand how Americans in the professional baseball community communicate with Spanish-speaking players. To further uncover how English-speaking players interact with their Spanish-speaking counterparts, 22 interviews were conducted with American members of the baseball community. Through the purview of cultural fusion theory, this article seeks to understand how English and Spanish-speaking baseball players accommodate each other. More specifically, the researchers interviewed ten current MiLB players, three former players, four current coaches who also played professionally, four team and league personnel, and one athletic trainer. It was concluded that baseball is a language that everyone can use to communicate through and players must be comfortable to immerse themselves in Spanish to learn and to be willing to fail. Interviewees also claim that language learning improves team chemistry which can impact wins and losses.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Previous studies on sports images have often focused on gender and race representation. However, with the rise of social media, sports photographers worldwide are fighting professionally produced and user-created images for audience attention. Recent scholarship has shown that stronger storytelling elements in sports photographs spur an increase in lower-level engagement metrics. The current study dives deeper into the types of images that generate key social media engagement. Researchers conducted a biometric analysis of 28 randomly sampled Instagram images from sports networks’ official feeds. Results indicate that social media images containing metacommunicative themes increase audience engagement. These findings offer insights into improving social media engagement for sports news sources.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Prior to the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Games, rights-holding broadcasters in multiple countries promised record-amount of coverage, including on digital platforms. This paper analyzes how NBC and CBC, the broadcasters in the U.S. and Canada, respectively, utilized social media platforms during the Paralympic Games. We employed two methodological approaches. The first draws on agenda diversity literature to provide a quantitative, descriptive analysis of Paralympics-related posts, interactions with other accounts, and gender representations. The second approach draws on research on the televisual logic of digital media to identify and interpret presentation, sequence, and visualization patterns. Our multidimensional analysis found differences in the volume of Paralympics-related posts and the utilization of interactive elements, across the two broadcasters. The coverage on both accounts highlighted home-nation athletes and their competitions, which shaped gender representations and the rhythm of social media coverage. Both broadcasters followed established sequences of mega-events, with the exception of an international conflict. CBC relied primarily on one journalist to provide updates and curling-related recaps, while NBC directed audiences to watch sports where U.S. athletes succeeded. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of cross-national comparative coverage of the Paralympics.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
The current study focused on the red cards and yellow cards that referees gave to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Division I women’s college soccer for their in-game communicative actions. These cards are distributed to players who are perceived to have engaged in a reckless play or an action that involved excessive force. Within the United States, HBCUs are institutions of higher education that historically and primarily serve students who are of African American descent. Thus, the strong Black woman collective (SBWC) theory of communication was the theoretical frame because this study focused on small groups that were mostly comprised of African American women. Previous studies on referee bias were summarized in the literature review. Publicly available data on 19,360 soccer games were then analyzed. The findings indicated that referees gave more red cards to HBCU women’s college soccer teams relative to predominantly White institution (PWI) women’s college soccer teams at a statistically significant level. Yellow cards were also disproportionately distributed to HBCUs relative to PWIs. Implications for communication theory were noted in the study discussion as were interpretations on why referee bias against HBCUs continues to occur.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
In this paper we focus on the posthumous media image of the deceased professional ice hockey player Pavol Demitra. He was a world-famous athlete, starring in both the NHL and KHL, but this paper primarily focuses on his fame in Slovakia, his native country. Demitra became a legend in his own lifetime, but his story only gained its true shape after he had died. The media played a dominant role in this deeper reflection of Demitra’s life. First, we monitored the Slovak media in the ten years following his tragic death. Next, we focused on the quantitative analysis of two categories, heroism and cultural and societal overlaps, which formed the basis of Demitra’s fame legacy. Through our third step, a qualitative frame analysis, we demonstrated how the media dealt with athlete’s framing. The results showed how Demitra was put on a pedestal and, in some aspects, immortalized as a divine, heroic statue made of marble. At the same time, his legacy has continued thanks to his son Lucas, a successful athlete, keeping the name alive.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
The 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) featured over 600 players representing 20 countries. Due to relaxed eligibility requirements, over one quarter of the players represented countries that differed from their birth nation. Through the lens of Social Identity Theory, the guiding research question of this study asked how identity is enacted and discussed when player nationality either aligns or does not align with the country they represent in the WBC. All WBC games featured on Fox networks were analyzed and any phrase describing a player was transcribed and coded utilizing a performance, personality, and physicality taxonomy resulting in 5937 phrases attributed to 547 players. Results indicate that those with aligned birth countries and WBC teams were depicted more positively with a higher rate of comments about their talent, experience, and composure. Those with misaligned teams and nationalities were described in greater detail regarding their backgrounds and connection to their WBC team. U.S.-born players representing a different country received significantly more comments pertaining to their U.S. roots; the reverse was true for those born abroad as their birth countries were more often referenced when they aligned with their WBC team thus suggesting a degree of in- and out-grouping by the commentators.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This paper explores how narrative storytelling converts individuals into sport fans. Data were collected through content analysis of Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive. Rhetorical criticism was applied to narrative elements identified in this popular docuseries. The conceptual framework drew from existing theories to detail how narrative storytelling effectively engages audiences and facilitates information exchange to achieve sport fandom. Findings show that the main narrative elements used in Drive to Survive were the plot types of adventure, ascension/descension, rivalry, and sacrifice, as well as the character type of hero. These narrative elements fostered sport fan conversion by providing multiple opportunities for information exchange, emotional connection, and inter-fan relationships. Ultimately, this study provides insight into conversion-through-narrative, strengthening the theoretical link between narrative storytelling and sport fandom by examining how narrative elements function in a successful case of sport fan conversion.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examined the seasonal sustainability reporting of Formula E for its content, variation, and linearity. Formula E was chosen since it was built as a sustainable sport enterprise rather than one which integrated sustainability into existing operations and for the accessibility of its annual sustainability reports. Using an exploratory approach for content and variation, and the Green Waves of sport sustainability for linearity, eight seasons of sustainability reports from Formula E were collected and examined via content analysis. Findings revealed the major content areas for Formula E concerned event management, car design, and community engagement with these initiatives classified as internal or external efforts. Reports were inconsistent in their structure, language, scope, and focus. The Green Waves suggest that while some efforts progress, others may regress according to strategy or the initiative’s life cycle. Formula E is progressing overall in their sustainability efforts, but exemplifies the lack of an end point to sustainability efforts. It is suggested that better coordination could yield higher strategic success and recognition.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
For decades, one of the most recognizable public faces of a local television news station was the sports anchor. However, as newsrooms across the United States struggle with employee burnout, sports departments have not been immune to low job satisfaction and high turnover. The purpose of this study is to examine what factors are causing sportscasters at local television stations to leave the profession. A survey of sports broadcasters who had left their positions at a television station for a job outside of broadcasting revealed that they felt overworked and underpaid, and many placed the blame for their problems directly on newsroom management.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
In 2016, Canada sports broadcaster TSN aired a documentary, Radical Play, which focuses on the players of football team Diverse City FC, many of whom are Muslim and wear hijabs. As posited in the documentary, following the lifting of FIFA’s ban on the wearing of the hijab, soccer became the women’s vehicle for gaining more confidence and agency, which they use to become social media “crusaders” who fight the online radicalization of girls and women. Utilizing theories of gendered Orientalism, I analyze Radical Play by exploring how Muslim sportswomen are constructed in relation to sport, radicalization, and empowerment. I argue that Radical Play frames Diverse City FC’s story through Western rescue discourses and construct a modernizing process where Muslim girls are said to be empowered by the power of Western sport. The constructed transformation of the women into radicalization informants that keep their communities’ safe acts as a preferred outcome of colonial benevolence and acceptance towards “development subjects.” While the main narrative of Radical Play is leveraged by gendered forms of Orientalism, a critical reading shows how the players voices create cracks in this overarching story that help unsettle dominant understandings of Muslim sportswomen.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
The following study applies the framework of self-presentation theory to examine one year of posts (n = 1064) from the TikTok and Instagram accounts of 18 highly marketable NCAA athletes. A content analysis was used to examine differences by platform, gender, and content type following the approval of NIL compensation for collegiate athletes. Findings revealed significant differences between male and female athletes regarding the type of content posted, prevalent self-presentation themes, and engagement. Male athletes were found to post more frontstage athletic performance content and backstage marketable lifestyle content than female athletes. In contrast, female athletes posted more backstage content in the attractive appearance category, which also was the category with the highest engagement from audiences. Additionally frontstage content in athletic performance content categories was more prevalent on Instagram, while backstage content appeared more frequently on TikTok. These findings advance our understanding of athletes’ social media platform use and are in line with traditional media presentations of gender and sport.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examines the tensions in the representations of human rights discourses in the context of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Primarily drawing from postcolonial approaches, it investigates how the construction of human rights narratives were deployed by two leading publications representing US (The New York Times—NYT) and Qatari (Gulf Times—GT) viewpoints. In doing so, the study probes the representation and self-portrayal of Qatari cultural, political, and socio-economic repertoire by the NYT and GT, respectively. Results from a qualitative content analysis highlight how the NYT emphasized the exotic Otherness of Qatar and its supposed inability-cum-illegitimacy to host the tournament. Alternatively, GT demonstrated a paradoxical disdain and desire for Western validation. Overall, the narratives in the NYT and GT tell a story of an ambivalent relationship between the West and Qatar situated in the historical context of colonialism and reflective of the ongoing, reciprocal dialogue between publications targeting English speaking audiences.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examines journalistic role performance in sports news in five Arab countries in relation to country, geographic frame, platforms, and sources. The comparative content analysis of three journalistic roles – loyal-facilitator, watchdog, and infotainment – in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) relies on 874 sports news stories from 40 print, broadcast, and online outlets, sampled in 2020 through a constructed, two-week stratified-systematic approach. Results point to variations in all roles as a function of some predictors more than others. Specifically, the UAE tended to be the most loyal/cheerleader, whereas Qatar led in the infotainment role. Loyalty was also apparent across the region in domestic news that was more loyalist than foreign news. Sources mattered in that political sources tended to predict higher levels of loyalist content, while sports sources did not have any impact on any role. Sources’ viewpoint of diversity, on the other hand, revealed multiple perspectives to be associated with more infotainment and watchdog content. The results indicate the loyalist cheerleader role that sports journalists in the West have been associated with for decades also applies to the Arab region, suggesting sports journalists behave in a similar manner irrespective of their country of origin.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
When considering that athletes are becoming more vocal about their beliefs related to social justice initiatives, the role of an athlete’s gender could have an impact on how sports fans view that athlete. When deciding to support or oppose a corporate social advocacy initiative, it can be argued that an individual’s perception of an athlete’s or team’s stance towards social justice can be influenced by elements of one’s social identity. Therefore, the current study expands on this idea by exploring how gender affects the perception of the credibility of an athlete as an endorser of CSA initiatives, considering both the gender of the participant and the gender of the athlete. Using both NBA and WNBA athletes, this experiment manipulates a league CSA initiative and players’ endorsements of the initiative to determine if (a) the participant’s reported gender and (b) the athlete’s gender will impact the perception of the athlete’s credibility. Results provided evidence that gender plays a significant role in that evaluation, such that the NBA player was perceived as more credible regardless of respondent gender, and while female respondents recorded no difference, male participants perceived the NBA player as more credible than his WNBA counterpart.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
In the extant scholarship, there remains a paucity of research underscoring how Western media frame the identity of Muslim men athletes from diverse backgrounds who challenge the colonial sporting institution (e.g., cricket) with the allegation of racism. There is also a significant lacuna in literature exploring how the identity of a Muslim man athlete is shaped in Eastern media, ensuing his racial accusations against a Western sporting institution. This study aimed to analyze the media’s depiction of Azeem Rafiq after his racism allegations against Yorkshire Cricket Club, contrasting British and South Asian perspectives through neo-Orientalism and postcolonial theory within media framing scholarship. We analyzed data through textual and thematic analysis. The study results unearth that while Rafiq was heralded as a voice against racism by the British media, some media outlets focused on the narratives of exoticism, otherness, and the mysterious “Orient” while discussing Rafiq’s personality. Further, some Pakistani and Indian media outlets portrayed the Western world as a monolithic entity. The study findings also uncovered that numerous times, the Club’s sponsors’ responses were framed within financial and administrative narratives, often overshadowing the underlying issue of structural racism.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Despite robust literature concerning the illness disclosure decision making process, it remains unclear how individuals choose to reveal and conceal non-visible health conditions in group exercise. At the intersection of non-visible illness management and group exercise, the purpose of this study is to apply communication privacy management theory (CPM) to better understand the core and catalyst criteria athletes with non-visible health conditions utilize when determining whether to reveal or conceal their conditions in the context of the CrossFit gym. CrossFit is an international fitness program with more than 14,000 affiliate gyms in more than 155 countries. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 CrossFit athletes. Findings indicate that core criteria prompted athletes to conceal because of identity and stigma threats but reveal as a way to break the stigma and advocate for themselves and others. Catalyst criteria shaped athletes’ disclosure decisions in two ways, including concealing to avoid burdening others and revealing to foster relationships. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
E-sports events play a crucial role as significant entertainment activities and platforms for emotional interaction among the public. This study seeks to delve into the processes underlying the emotional experiences of online spectators during interactive rituals within e-sports events. It employs the core concept of emotional energy within interaction ritual chains as framework for analysis. To accomplish this, we conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews with 20 online spectators actively engaged in the League of Legends professional league. These interviews specifically targeted their emotions, feelings, evaluations, behaviors, and other relevant experiences both preceding, during, and subsequent to spectating. Our analysis revealed four distinct stages within the emotional energy change process: emotional arousal, immersion, climax, and continuity. These stages collectively culminate in the formulation of a dynamic, continuous, and cyclical emotional energy model. Notably, spectators adeptly employ various emotional regulation strategies to mitigate the impact of disruptive factors. The integration of ritual symbols, coupled with the positive feedback loop of emotional energy, serves to connect the five identified stages and establish a cohesive cyclic upward mechanism. These findings not only offer unique insights into the micro-level emotional experiences of online spectators but also hold practical implications for the effective management of e-sports events.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Sports scholars have long studied how stereotypes pervade sports. However, little if any of this research has examined the origins of these stereotypes and how they influence journalistic practice. This study explores sports journalists’ work routines, their perception of stereotypes in sports, and whether there is a connection between the two. The authors conduct a critical discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with 13 sports journalists from across the U.S. Results show that journalists are (sometimes) aware of stereotypes, downplay their role in perpetuating them, and engage in color-blind rhetoric about the prevalence of stereotypes in sports media coverage of college sports. Additionally, the sports journalists interviewed as part of this study outlined the various constraints on their jobs that might impact their ability to establish rapport with athletes, which might result in an increased likelihood of the perpetuation of stereotypes. The findings underscore the need for more scholarly inquiry about sports press conferences and the connection between journalistic practice and ideology, particularly as it relates to race.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Alternative media enable marginalized people to voice their experiences, challenge dominant ideologies, and circumvent mainstream gatekeepers. Podcasts are an alternative medium that can be counterhegemonic, foregrounding such issues as antiracism, Indigeneity, LGBTQ rights, socialism, and workers’ perspectives. This article expands on alternative-media research by transporting it to the skateboarding subculture. I first depict the skateboard outlets Thrasher Magazine (1981) and The Berrics (2007) website as hegemonic and mainstream. By contrast, I depict podcasts The Bunt (2016) and Vent City (2019) as counterhegemonic and alternative. I then ask: To what degree do skate podcasts acknowledge professional skateboarders as workers? And: Do such shows allow skaters to express grievances with their industry? A discourse analysis of Thrasher and The Berrics demonstrates that they often mystify freelance work, class, and skaters’ working conditions. An analysis of The Bunt and Vent City suggests that podcasts offer unique and radical perspectives, though attention to working conditions is uneven. I find there may be too much overlap between the case studies for an alternative/mainstream distinction to be meaningful. Political currents within skateboarding are still promising, however, and digital media will be essential in making the subculture and industry more inclusive.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Social media provides athletes with opportunities to enhance their personal brands, engage with fans, and access professional opportunities. Several studies have examined how athletes use social media to attract and engage large audiences. Less is known about the social forces that enable and constrain their popularity. Drawing on expectation states theory, this study considers how athletes’ social status affects their follower counts and engagement rates on Instagram. Based on a content analysis of 6240 images posted on Instagram by 112 professional disc golfers, we show that the gender, sport dominance, and physical attractiveness of athletes affect their popularity, controlling for their strategic efforts to self-brand. These findings offer new insight into the ongoing debate over social media’s impact on long-standing inequalities in the media-sport industry.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
The paper examines the construction of China’s country image in the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. It demonstrates how a country that has no winter sports tradition used the mega-event to showcase its national narrative and to promote winter sports industries. A semiotic framework is developed to model China’s country image as evaluative attributes and to elucidate how they are constructed through linguistic and visual resources in the theater, livestream, and video inserts. The analysis shows that the ceremony was narrated around four major themes—the world’s China, People’s China, the aesthetic China, and the modernized China. Instead of revealing a changeless, nostalgic and mythical China that speaks to a Western orientalistic imagination, these four themes work together to reshape a modern China identity, which brings the contrasting values of globalism, nationalism, Chinese traditional aesthetics, and neoliberalism into a coherent artistic performance. The characteristics of nation branding discourse reflect China’s urban regeneration policies on the one hand, and public diplomacies during the COVID-19 pandemic on the other.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This article provides an overview and analysis of how the study of sport at the intersection with the media has developed in the Slovenian context over the last three decades. The first part of the article briefly explains the importance and role of sport and media in the broader social context. By looking in particular at sports journalism and introducing the Slovenian context, the purpose of the study is clarified. The second part identifies and reviews all academic research contributions published on the highlighted intersection and during the selected period. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most frequently addressed aspects of the sports media system, the main research topics identified and the media outlets studied, the main findings are summarized and highlighted. While studies addressing different aspects of nationality predominate, attention to gendered nationalism is highlighted as particularly valuable in the context of studies focusing on gender and its intersections. Event-oriented and decontextualized sports content is problematized in the context of recent studies focusing on some aspects of sports journalism. In the final section of the article, some guidelines are formulated to encourage further research in (and of) this geographical area (and beyond).

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
In news media, one stereotype that is continually over-represented is Black men as criminals, leading to what many refer to as “the Black criminal stereotype.” Although research demonstrates that distorted news portrayals of criminals can provoke stereotypical responses in viewers, limited evidence connects these effects to sport media. Anderson and Raney (2018) explored this in an experimental study (n = 234) and found evidence of the Black criminal stereotype among sports fans. However, more research was needed to further explore this phenomenon. The current study employed a similar experimental design (n = 603) in an attempt to (1) replicate their 2018 study to examine whether sports fans’ perceptions of criminal athletes have changed over the past several years, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, and (2) determine whether the sport played by an alleged criminal athlete might be linked to judgments regarding race and crime in sports. Our findings indicate that sports fandom still predicts stereotypical judgments. However, individual difference variables—particularly social conservatism, African American stereotype endorsement, and gender—were more strongly related. Our findings point toward the potential power of social movements in influencing attitudes and beliefs regarding race and crime.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Much of the content that feeds the sports-media system originates through the often-fraught interactions between athletes and journalists. For generations, broader perceptions of this relationship were shaped by sports journalists, who had the last word. The rise of social media and athlete-driven storytelling platforms has seen sports figures speaking with fans outside of this interaction, offering a challenge to the professional authority of the sports journalist and the renegotiation of one of the core routines of mediated sport. One topic athletes and others have taken up in these spaces is their relationship with the press. This textual analysis of 110 stories posted on The Players’ Tribune, an athlete-sourced storytelling portal, finds mixed opinions on the state of athlete-press relations, with some pointing out the limits of what sports journalists can ever know, while others openly question media practices and choices. These messages are significant as athletes are using their platforms to shape perceptions of the sporting press among those most likely to consume journalistic content.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Scholars and professionals have discussed that women working in sports media are often targeted by hateful rhetoric on social media. Through the lenses of hegemonic masculinity and online toxicity theories, this study examines X (formerly known as Twitter) mentions directed at both men and women sports reporters, comparing how men and women are harassed and how often. The study also uses a network analysis to examine toxic behaviors and communities directed at sports journalists. The sample of nearly 350,000 mentions was gathered over a 12-year period. Results show that while toxic posts directed at women were no more common than those that were directed at men, the content of the toxic posts were markedly different. The toxic posts directed toward men contained many sports-related themes, such as coaches, games, or team names. The toxic posts toward women were more likely to contain discussions of gender, sex, and sexual assault.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Various stakeholders have hailed the recently introduced “European Championships” – a multi-sport event comprising competitions for European titles in several sports – as a huge success, particularly because some previously overlooked niche sports received an extraordinary amount of media attention. Empirical evidence indicates that the event has elicited increased live broadcasting of the participating sports. However, retrospective coverage in popular news media also plays an important role in helping sports federations attract active members, fans, and sponsors. Based on mediatization and news value theory, we investigated whether “the European Championships” elicited increased coverage of the most popular German TV news show when compared with corresponding stand-alone competitions in previous years. We also assessed whether all participating sports benefitted equally from this mediatization strategy of aggregation. Employing quantitative content analysis using a quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control group in a field setting, we analyzed screen time from competitions during (the) European Championships, controlling for national success. The results overall indicate a significant positive aggregation effect, though not all sports profited equally. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of aggregation as a mediatization strategy that might be particularly attractive to niche sports federations.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Electronic sports (esports) have become one of the fastest-growing forms of new media. As a result, esports livestreaming media is a necessary medium for connecting viewers and esports livestreams. Drawing on the media richness theory, the purpose of the current study was to explore how livestreaming media attributes and viewers’ individual characteristics (esports involvement) influence the viewer’s experience (satisfaction and flow experience) and media loyalty. The results of a latent moderated structural equations (LMS) modeling analysis using a total of 568 viewers revealed that informativeness and convenience significantly influenced viewer satisfaction and flow experience, which in turn influenced media loyalty. Interestingly, interactivity was found to be a more important attribute for viewer satisfaction and flow experience among highly involved viewers while informativeness was an important attribute for less involved viewers. Furthermore, viewer satisfaction is pivotal in establishing media loyalty for less involved viewers, while flow experience is key for highly involved viewers. The findings of this research have theoretical implications for the literature on esports media and media consumption experiences and offer managers effective strategies for developing esports media loyalty.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
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.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
In the span of four years from 2018 to 2022, three consecutive Olympic Games were held in East Asia – namely PyeongChang 2018 in South Korea, Tokyo 2020 in Japan and Beijing 2022 in China. Given the geographic concentration of global multi-sports mega-events in the Far East, this period has been referred to as the ‘East Asian era' of the Olympic Games. This introduction to the special issue outlines two major themes of the changes during the East Asian era: (1) the shift of economic and geopolitical power from the West to the East; and (2) the changes and challenges offered by the Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms and the COVID-19 pandemic within East Asia. After that, each contribution will be introduced and briefly described. Overall, by collecting contributions focusing on the 2018–2022 Olympic Games, this special issue critically analyses the state of play in the formations of dominant and emerging discourses during the East Asia era and offers its implications for a broader understanding of the continuity and changes to the economic, political, social, cultural and ecological dimensions of the Olympic Movement.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Student-athletes are often treated differently and inequitably based on their race/ethnicity. For example, Black student-athletes often face unjust stereotyping and discrimination because they are seen for their athletic achievements over their academic achievements compared to White student-athletes. Using in-game broadcast data, Black athletes are also discussed differently than White athletes, with disparities in how broadcasters focus on players’ physical and cognitive abilities. The current paper draws on and extends this literature by using natural language processing techniques to identify how experts communicate about different National Football League (NFL) prospects. A decade of data (2014-2023), including nearly 4,000 draft profiles, suggested writers attending to Black draftees used fewer positive emotions in player narratives than writers attending to White draftees. Narratives of White players also mentioned the NFL more than narratives of Black players, revealing a possible disparity in perceived belonging to the league. Implications for theory and equity in sport are discussed.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examines National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletes’ experiences engaging in activism through the lens of the communicative constitution of organizations. Specifically, we investigated the modalities and approaches collegiate athletes employ in their activism. Findings indicate that collegiate athletes gravitate toward online and offline channels, and fiscal, ideological, and organizational activities as modalities for their activist efforts. We also uncovered that collegiate athletes’ inclination to call-in versus call-out is characterized by their willingness to engage with the recipients of their cause-related messages. This inquiry demonstrates the discursive and material nature of collegiate athlete activism, highlighting the call-in approach, and provides direction for athletes and athletic institutions in this time of heightened activist engagement.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This qualitative study examines how former National Football League (NFL) players retrospectively make sense of concussion risks post-retirement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with retired NFL players (N = 10) who sustained at least one official concussion during their professional career. Guided by sensemaking theory and reflexive thematic analysis, themes were generated to characterize player attitudes toward concussion risks. Themes identified include concussions represent an invisible threat, concussions create more concern than other injuries, and head injuries change player outlooks on career longevity. Player strategies to mitigate concussion risks included avoid thinking about the risks by focusing on the moment or on the financial rewards, rely on teammates to look out for each other’s health, and recognize the fine line between valor and discretion. The findings inform risk communication efforts geared toward reducing head injuries in football, as players must balance competing goals of elite performance and sustaining their football career versus prioritizing their long-term health.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This study examines the contemporary nature of the relationship between sport journalists and media relations personnel, particularly within the context of collegiate athletics. Despite years of sharing a “symbiotic relationship” wherein both sides benefited from the success of the other, sports media professionals have cited a strained rapport, as sports information directors (SIDs) and media relations personnel have taken internal positions aimed at producing content comparable to what sports media have traditionally developed. Through in-depth interviews with 16 beat writers, the current project identified three salient themes related to beat writers’ perceived relationships with SIDs and media relations professionals representing athletic programs they cover: (1) frustration over the control of information, (2) misperceptions about the media’s value to the organization, and (3) growing uncertainty about the future of the relationship between beat writers and media relations professionals. These findings contribute theory and practice within the context of the Strategic Sport Communication Model (SSCM).

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Analgesic medication (i.e., painkillers) provides a legal method for athletes to compete through pain. Masking injury presents the risk of injury exacerbation as well as potential organ damage, long-term musculoskeletal conditions, and dependence. The framing of elite athletes using medication to compete through injury could influence the attitudes and behaviors of other sportspersons including junior and recreational participants. This research explored the framing of tennis player Rafael Nadal’s anesthetic injections at the 2022 French Open via content analysis of 103 news articles. The results revealed global news lacked critical coverage, normalized competing through injury under moral frames, and valorized such behavior as heroic and courageous. Further, news coverage can be classified into four types: individual experience, medical, physical status, and policy. Identification of frames related to competing through injury can inform messaging to promote safer practices concerning painkiller use.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, there emerged on social media an active cohort of sport celebrities, promoting through their messages virus-prevention behaviors. The study tested how people’s intentions to adopt COVID-19 prevention practices were affected by their perceived credibility of sport celebrities, perceived social distance of sport celebrities, and identification with sport celebrities. The study also tested how the message’s power style moderated those relations. The researchers selected four sport celebrities who were active on social media and applied powerful and powerless linguistic styles in developing their social media messages. College students (N = 284) were randomly exposed to one of eight stimuli and asked the questions in the self-administered online survey. The perceived credibility positively affected COVID-19 prevention intentions regardless of the message’s power style. The perceived social distance was effective for intentions only in the powerless message. Identification with sport celebrities was effective regardless of the message’s power style, with the powerless message being more effective than the powerful one. The study provides a theoretical perspective on how people utilize sport celebrities’ characteristics as peripheral cues during health information processing. Also, the study offers practical implications for leveraging social media and sports celebrities to promote virus prevention.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Previous studies of NBC’s primetime Olympic commentary have revealed differences in how the network describes male figure skaters as compared to the composite of other male Olympians. To determine if NBC presented male Olympic figure skaters differently than the composite of other male Olympians during its 2018 primetime Winter Olympic broadcast, all 63.5 hours of NBC’s primetime broadcast television coverage of the PyeongChang Games were examined using a taxonomy that categorized NBC’s commentary about Olympic athletes into macro categories of success/failure, and personality/physicality. This study revealed 10 significantly-different mediated dialogue trends between male figure skaters and the aggregate of other male Winter Olympians. Male figure skaters were more likely to receive success comments related to strength, composure, and commitment, and failure comments related to a lack of concentration, strength, and composure. They were also more likely to receive comments related to being outgoing/extroverted. Other male Olympians were more likely to receive success comments related to intelligence and were more likely to receive comments about their size/body parts and comments in the “other/neutral” category. The findings are analyzed in the context of the PyeongChang broadcast and longitudinal research.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Identity in sports forms a key stage in which globalization is both constituted and resisted and where various contentions and nuanced dynamics remain to be unpacked. In this paper, we examined the media’s ability, from China and the US separately, to construct and deconstruct the national identity of a naturalized athlete, Eileen Gu (Gu Ailing), an American-born Chinese athlete, during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. By combining frame analysis with critical discourse analysis (CDA), salient differences were found in terms of the media frames and discourses used by China and the US in their adoption and interpretations of “sports role”, “ethnic role”, “social role”, and “entertainment role”. Furthermore, we pointed out that the national media from both countries simultaneously attempt to legitimize their stance on Gu’s national identity and stress the maximization of each nation’s own interest. The findings shed light on our existing understanding of the complex identity of naturalized athletes in the context of globalization and argue that media discourses, as constructed by the two countries, remain deeply rooted in an overdetermined East-West binary.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
The purpose of this study is to examine a massive shift in the framing of sports betting legalization in the United States. Thematic analysis from newspaper reports covering seminal moments in sports betting between 1991 (when public hearings were held prior to the passage of PASPA) and June 2018 (to include reports that immediately followed the fall of PASPA) identifies dominant frames and sources found in U.S. newspapers. Findings from this study reveal important implications for journalism and future policy making in a new era of widespread state-sponsored sports betting in the United States. Findings suggest that over time economic frames smothered moral/social and integrity frames surrounding legal sports betting. The discourse transformed from one of protecting vulnerable populations and the integrity of the games to one of protecting “consumers” who might gamble in a “safe, regulated” environment while contributing taxes to the state. Further, data revealed that official sources (e.g., professional sports representatives and elected officials) used access to newspaper reporting to assert tremendous influence over policy by shifting the narrative from prohibition to promotion of legalized sports betting.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
This research focuses on the audiovisual broadcasts of the UEFA Women’s Champions League final won by FC Barcelona in 2021. The primary aim of this study is to analyze Spanish media discourses with three specific objectives: to determine the presence or absence of sexism; to identify alternative narratives that may emerge in the broadcasts; and to evaluate whether sports media normalizes these narratives or generates more subtle forms of sexism in the representation of women in football. Sports broadcasting often features sensationalist narratives that can escalate to sexist speech, configured as hate speech, inciting different degrees of aggression or violence. This condition diminishes the potential of sports as a space for coexistence. This article presents a qualitative and quantitative thematic analysis. Following Fuller (2006), Hesse-Biber (2017), and Martínez-Corcuera et al. (2022), we applied coding techniques to examine content related to the representation and participation of women in football. Conclusion reveals a minimal presence of discourses that belittle or marginalize female football players, although multiple alternative narratives that demand equality and recognition are also observed. These findings are consistent with numerous European studies that recognize women's football, although bias against female athletes compared to their male counterparts still persists.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Scholars have long worked to explore the existence of race-based stereotypes and narratives within sports media. Video game scholars share in this curiosity of understanding the extent to which racial stereotypes are being embedded into games and the role that they may play in cultivating or perpetuating racial stereotypes among their players. Utilizing framing and schema theories as a guide for understanding the media’s role in developing stereotypes, the present study conducted a content analysis of player data present in EA SPORTS’ FIFA 22 to investigate whether racial stereotypes were being embedded in the most popular sports video game (SVG) title through its player attributes. Each athlete represented in the game is given a 0–99 rating across a total of 35 attributes with the intention of reflecting the player’s real-life ability in these areas. Through an analysis of the avatar’s skin tones alongside their respective values for each of the attributes selected for analysis, the study found significant differences between athletes of different skin tones across nearly all of the attributes present that reinforce the Brain vs Brawn narratives scholars have located in many sporting contexts. Conclusions and suggestions of next steps are discussed.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
Coinciding with athlete mothers’ stories gaining media visibility, sport media researchers are studying media discourses to learn more about socially constructed motherhood and sport. The present study extends media research on elite athlete mothers, by using feminist narrative inquiry to interrogate discrimination meanings in sport. North American sport media stories were collected on Canadian athletes’ (i.e., boxer Mandy Bujold, basketball player Kim Gaucher) journeys to the 2020 Tokyo Games after being discriminated against due to their motherhood status. Thematic narrative analysis of 103 stories identified three narrative motifs (i.e., recurring concepts) in stories linked to discrimination meanings: last shots, forced to choose, and more than us. The first two motifs are discussed in relation to a motherhood penalty narrative linked to sexism and discrimination. The more than us motif is discussed in relation to the resolution to compete for both athletes, linked to maternal activism and social change. All three motifs exposed and challenged maternal discrimination in sport, using ‘feminist consciousness’ linked to a neoliberal feminist status quo. These findings show the pedagogical potential of media stories for athlete maternity rights awareness and structural change, while highlighting a need for intersectional feminist reform regarding athlete parents and post-pandemic recovery.

Communication & Sport, Ahead of Print.
At least five NCAA student athletes died by suicide in spring 2022. The deaths generated national news media attention while underscoring the stressors student-athletes face in relation to mental health. Journalists play an important role in shaping public understanding of issues, including mental health and suicide. By framing issues, journalists can shape the way audiences interpret (a) problems, (b) their causes, (c) their moral implications, and (d) potential treatments. The present study used thematic analysis to understand how four types of news organizations framed the student-athletes' deaths by suicide in 2022. The study examined 75 stories from national news outlets (e.g., Washington Post), sports publications (e.g., ESPN), student publications (e.g., The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), and community publications (e.g., The Capital Times in Madison, WI). News stories identified environmental factors (e.g., poor mental health resources, stress) as a problem for student-athletes, while describing misplaced university priorities as a cause. Journalists described a need for universities and the NCAA to improve the depth and breadth of mental health resources for student-athletes, describing the action as a moral imperative. Implications are discussed in relation to sports communication and health communication.