Reflections on communication and sport: on mediatization and cultural analysis

In this essay, Garry Whannel reflects on why research on media and sport has often been disdained by traditional academia and liberal intelligentsia. The first section argues that mediated sports are an important constituent part of popular culture, making its discourses worthy of scholarly study. The second section considers how early studies of mediated sport set in the tradition of British cultural studies opened the door to a inquiry that has grown in importance in both critical sport and media studies. The central section focuses on the complexities of “sport analysis, snobbery, and anti-intellectualism.” Considered here is the early and continued resistance to the study of media and sport and its derogatory stigmatization as a “Mickey Mouse” subject even in the face of excellent scholarship that has developed around the cultural and political analysis of sport. The article closes with suggestions for future work and ways to change narrative constructions of the field.