CFP: FlowTV - Sports Media: Tensions and Transitions

FlowTV Special Issue
Sports Media: Tensions and Transitions

As the NFL bans players from Tweeting on the sidelines and the NCAA 
bans fans' unofficial Facebook recruitment pages, it is clear that 
players, fans, leagues, and media institutions are struggling to 
maintain control in changing mediated sports environments. Yet it is 
not just new media that is both enchancing and threatening the 
relationship between athletic institutsions, media industries and fan 
communities. Major transitions have also occurred in traditional media 
like television and radio with the 30th anniversary of ESPN's 
Sportscenter, and online audio and video available for seemingly every 
major sport worldwide. Although sports and mass media have a 
well-established symbiotic relationship, media studies has been slow 
to embrace sport as a legitimate or significant object of study; this 
is a negligence that Flow seeks to remedy. Questions to consider might 
include:

   * How have fan experiences been transformed by transitions from 
radio to television, network to cable, and television to the internet?
   * How have the games, players, fans, and leagues been transformed 
by these media developments?
   * What of other technological developments such as screens in 
arenas, ballparks and stadiums?
   * What is the social significance of fans', players', coaches' 
and leagues' use of social media technologies such as Twitter, 
Facebook, iPhones, and blogging?
   * How do these all of these developments change the fan 
experience and notions of fandom?
   * How do these developments contribute to athletes' ability to 
construct and promote their own celebrity image?
   * Should players be given a voice via personal blogs or Twitter 
and what does it mean when leagues regulate and silence these voices?
   * What happens to traditional gatekeeping roles when fans become 
the experts and journalists are bypassed by amateur coverage and 
footage?
   * How have discourses and representations of gender, race, class, 
sexuality, and ethnicity progressed (or not) over the decades?
   * How do advertisers, journalists, and leagues reinforce rigid 
constructs and representations of "the athlete" and "the fan"?


We encourage submissions that highlight and critically analyze 
contemporary or historical tensions between sports leagues, media 
industries, technological developments, fans, athletes, 
representations, and/or significant case studies. We welcome 
submissions which address any sport, American or International, 
professional and amateur from tennis and golf, to rugby and hockey, to 
college football and professional basketball. Flow has a longstanding 
policy of encouraging non-jargony, highly readable pieces and ample 
incorporation of images and video. Please send submissions (attached 
as a Word doc) of between 1000-1500 words to Co-Coordinating Editors  
Alex Cho (alexcho47@gmail.com) and Jacqueline Vickery 
(jvickery183@gmail.com) no later than  Monday, October 5, 2009.