2 Playing on the communication and sport field: dispositions, challenges, and priorities

This chapter considers the origins, development, and epistemological contexts undergirding the study of communication and sport as an emergent and growing field of inquiry. Early in the chapter, the contexts underlying the development of studying sport in communication and media studies are considered and woven into a brief chronology of the area’s maturation towards disciplinary legitimacy. This is followed by an analysis of the challenges presented by competing and complementary interests at play in three disciplinary and epistemological dispositions seen in the study of communication and sport. The closing section of the chapter considers key challenges that need to be met in further developing the study of communication and sport along with some priorities that need to be focused upon for the area to extend its impact.