[Air-L] FlowTV CFP: Sports Media

[Jacqueline Vickery]

FlowTV Special Issue <http://flowtv.org/?p=4275>
Sports Media: Tensions and TransitionsDeadline: Monday, Oct 5

Please distribute widely.

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 <http://flowtv.org/> 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 at gmail.com) and Jacqueline Vickery
(jvickery183 at gmail.com) no later than  *Monday, October 5, 2009*.

--
Jacqueline Vickery
Senior Editor, FlowTV.org
Doctoral Student
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Radio-Television-Film
http://www.jvickery.com/