Please distribute widely.

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 enhancing and threatening the  
relationship between athletic institutions, 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 ([log in to unmask]) and Jacqueline Vickery  
([log in to unmask]) no later than  Monday, October 5, 2009.

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