Contemporary sport and media are so deeply intertwined as to be inextricable, and the institution of the media is an enormously powerful force in shaping knowledge and understanding of increasingly dynamic, complex societies. The media are both agents of the globalization process and providers of interpretive frameworks of the characteristics and consequences of the global for their audiences. The corporate sports media are especially important because sport is a key testing ground for debates about the possibilities and limits, advantages and costs of globalization. Sport works, for its legions of enthusiastic spectators (fanatics), by tapping into, encouraging and amplifying collective identification and emotion. It is heavily reliant on an ‘Us/Them’ dualism that is conducive to expressions of racism (as a relatively easily activated, visceral signifier of difference), and of other divisive ‘isms’, such as sexism, although at some highly-charged sporting moments these may be obscured by other loci of identification (such as that of ‘the national’). Paradoxically, therefore, the media are deeply implicated in the breaking down of barriers to the free circulation of labour, capital, technologies and cultural forms, while at the same time symbolically resurrecting them by fostering the racialized antipathies that add ‘spice’ to major competitive sporting spectacles. This presentation will consider, critically, the roles and responsibilities of the media regarding representational discourses of race under conditions of globally re-configured sports and societies.
Despite increased comprehensive understanding of ethnicity and the problems inherent with artificial assemblage of identity groupings, sportcasters largely continue to describe the action with stereotypical Black/White categorical distinctions, often resulting in an amalgamation of disparate ethnicities into overarching categories defined solely by one’s skin color. Thus, athletes such as Fijian golfer Vijay Singh, Cablinasian golfer Tiger Woods, and French basketball player Tony Parker are frequently all subjected to biases applied to “Black” athletes, even though each have distinctively different ethnic backgrounds. This presentation will explore how sportscaster dialogue is applied to complex cases of ethnicity (such as Olympian Apollo Anton Ohno, golfer Michelle Wie, and University of Florida basketball standout Joakim Noah), demonstrating that discussions of ethnicity are often improperly pigeonholed into preconceived notion of ethnic-related sporting achievement. Ultimately, when ethnicity cannot be summarized into simple one-word ethnic distinctions (e.g. "Black" or "Hispanic"), issues of ethnicity are frequently ignored, as sportscasters would rather omit discussions of ethnicity than make an error that could have severe occupational ramifications. The primary focus of the presentation will be on sports media content, but data regarding media effects of ethnicity biases will also be presented to illuminate how sports media can impact international society.
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