Media and Sport: The Cultural Dynamics of Global Games

Abstract

The institutions of media and sport have increasingly converged over the last century, forming a media sports cultural complex of global proportions. This development has raised concerns over whether sport has become ‘mediatised’ and, conversely, that the media are increasingly ‘sportised’. The media sports cultural complex generates a vast array of representations of sport and the societies of which it is a part. It is important, therefore, to analyse the ways in which media sport texts reproduce or challenge prevailing ideologies of socio-cultural power in such key areas as gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, and sexuality. Media sport texts are especially instrumental in representing national identities and international relations in an era of intensified globalisation. In covering events of national cultural significance, they are also implicated in issues surrounding ‘cultural citizenship’ and in attempts by sport fan communities to exercise greater control over a fluid, dynamic and highly contested media sport environment.