Examining Identity in Sports Media

Communication issues involving sports media permeate myriad levels of society. These issues are important sources for learning and reinforcing social beliefs; they are salient contexts for investigating issues of identity, including ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability, and more. Consequently, sport and media inscribe numerous implicit and explicit ideologies that saturate our culture. Using a wide variety of theoretical and methodological constructs (for example: surveys, content analyses, ethnographic research, field work, rhetorical approaches, other appropriate quantitative or qualitative approaches), Examining Identity in Mediated Sports examines various media - including television, film, advertising, print, Web sites, and nontraditional media - to expose how the intersection of sport and media construct, reinforce, and/or perpetuate perceptions of human identities. This book: - investigates the numerous ways print, electronic, and digital media present issues of identity in sports coverage - each chapter addresses media portrayals and/or cultural representations of one or more form of identity - ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability, etc - as it relates to sport - contributors, both seasoned and up-and-coming scholars of sport, represent a fine and diverse balance of intellectual ideologies