Sociology of Sport Journal最新文献

The only Iranian woman to ever win an Olympic medal, Taekwondo Athlete Kimia Alizadeh, immigrated to Germany and became a refugee participant for the 2020/2021 Tokyo Games, competing against her former compatriot, teammate, and friend. This study content analyzes four Iranian media sources as they rendered the story of a former national hero-turned-refugee. A total of 15 frame categories were applied to each of the media sources: (a) Twitter (n = 5,662), (b) television (n = 103), (c) radio (n = 117), and (d) newspapers/digital-native news (n = 119). Television was found to adopt the most critical tones of Alizadeh, with social media, newspapers, and radio offering assessments that ranged from neutral to positive. Interestingly, social media and newspaper frames were significantly correlated, while other media sources were not.

Matters related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have taken center stage in intercollegiate athletics in response to renewed momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery (to name a few) in 2020. Following the trend, athletics diversity and inclusion officer positions have been developed to implement DEI programming and strategy in athletics on respective campuses. However, while research on DEI programming at historically White institutions is well established, inquiries on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are rare. To fill this gap in the literature on strategic DEI efforts, the present study aims to analyze the current landscape of DEI work at HBCUs. Drawing from racialized organization theory, we argue that the contemporary conceptualization of DEI hinders the perceptual need for DEI programming at HBCUs. Thus, the monolithic approach of DEI programming cannot remain the pragmatic solution to inequitable experiences in NCAA athletics, specifically at HBCUs. Considerations include budgetary allocations, professional development, and the overall athlete experience.

Faced with the increasingly politicized nature of sport and the need for resource accumulation under neoliberal capitalism, brands employ political stances to connect with consumers and expand customer bases. The ubiquity of social media in the present moment offers a unique opportunity to analyze corporate messaging and also audience response. Seven hundred and fifty YouTube comments from three Nike ads were coded. Overall commenters responded positively to Nike acting as a “representative” for progressivism in sport while failing to acknowledge larger social movements or Nike’s own questionable business practices. Using Debord’s theory of spectacle and Fisher’s capitalist realism, we discuss “recuperative wokeness,” our term for how these narratives serve to co-opt activism, and how this works to maintain the legitimacy of neoliberal market system.

When athletes gained rights from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL), the NCAA’s historic hegemony over college sports was challenged. However, given the recency of NIL, there is minimal research on how the NCAA communicated NIL changes to its members during this time. Through the lens of hegemony theory, this research explored how the NCAA communicated its hegemony and its loss of power via its distribution of NIL resources (N = 48). Critical discourse analysis demonstrated the NCAA and its leaders predominantly employed ideological influence in their communications to members and athletes to follow NIL guidelines. This influence centered around appeals to fairness and amateurism. The NCAA also tried to use coercion to force compliance. Finally, with an increasing trend toward decentralization, the NCAA relinquished hegemony in communications that shifted control to member institutions and by requesting federal involvement.

Paternalistic institutional structures are strategically arranged to maintain locus of control and preserve male-centric patriarchal authority. A confluence of cultural, social, and legal structures perpetuates paternalism within National Collegiate Athletic Association college sport and specifically in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football. This study examined FBS bowl game broadcasts to determine the prevalence of paternalistic and infantilizing commentary. An analysis of in-game commentary from a sample of 18 FBS bowl games from the 2019 to 2020 season revealed that commentators frequently infantilize FBS football players, normalizing a paternalistic and exploitative coach–athlete relationship.

In the 2010s, certain women in the sports television industry ascended beyond the often-reductive roles of studio hosts or sideline reporters, giving their sports opinions and occasionally hosting their own programs. This article argues that women who achieve this standing are forced to play a new role, that of the “cool sports girl.” Although “cool sports girls” gain male support through adopting masculine-coded traits, such as sports knowledge and smack talk, this article examines the misogynistic backlash these women face, interpreting the backlash as representing finite boundaries of the gains that women have achieved in a hypermasculine industry. This article reads the tenure of Katie Nolan at Fox Sports (2013–2017) as a representative example of how female television pundits exhibit agency amid entrenched industrial patriarchy.

This article explores how sports coaches’ identity and social relations are shaped within the context of new policy initiatives in sport. It focuses particularly on South Korea’s ongoing sports reforms wherein sports coaches feel stigmatized and disgraced. Informed by classic and contemporary sociological understandings of stigma and relying both on documents and narratives from 29 individuals, our qualitative analysis reveals that Korean coaches’ stigma is discrediting, prior-known, and power-laden. By viewing stigmatization as a social process constructed both “symbolically” and “structurally,” this article extends Goffman’s analysis to argue that coaches’ stigmatization is rooted in the social, institutional, and political power around sports reforms that forge stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs across society by offering ready-made scripts for both the stigmatized and the “normals.”