SOCIAL ANALYSIS IN THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF SPORT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30925/Keywords:
Sports journalism, Sports , Media, Social analysisAbstract
The range of sport-related topics that become news has considerably expanded over the past few decades, including a notable increase in the coverage of off-field subjects. Yet media coverage tends to focus on a small number of topics, few when compared to the variety of sport-related matters worth attention. The paper explores whether the press coverage of sports reflects the full extent of the sporting phenomenon. More specifically, it assesses the place for social analysis in the media coverage of sport. Sport impacts society in multiple ways. How frequently and in what ways are these impacts covered by the media? A new taxonomy of 21 topics and 131 subtopics of social relevance to media sport was developed for the purposes of this investigation. The new taxonomy, intended for use to examine any type of media, was tested on a sample of Italian print newspapers. Data on the coverage of the social dimension of sport were collected, using the new taxonomy, through the content analysis of 6,501 newspaper pages from five different artificial timeframes and a combined period of 28 days, spanning from September 2018 to April 2020. The sample included both general-interest and sports newspapers, allowing for the additional analysis of coverage differences based on the type of press. Although the importance of the research endeavour was on defining the tool (taxonomy) rather than the results of the test, the analysis of the selected corpus yielded preliminary findings worth sharing on how news media cover the social aspects of sport. The newly developed taxonomy, or matrix, lays the foundations for further research in various directions, including examining the social analysis of sport in digital and audiovisual media, non-daily news reporting, long-form journalism, the local press, citizen journalism, and other journalistic ecosystems.
References
1. Bowen, Howard R. Social Responsibilities of the Businessman. New York: Harper and Row, 1953.
2. Coakley, Jay J. Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. 12th edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.
3. Craig, Peter, ed. Sport Sociology. 3rd edition. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.
4. Cuccoli, Rosarita. Fondamenti di Sociologia dello Sport. Verona: Qui Edit, 2024.
5. Cuccoli, Rosarita. Sports Journalism in Society. Bologna: Bologna University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.30682/9791254775424.
6. Cuccoli, Rosarita. “The Media Coverage of the Special Olympics World Winter Games Turin 2025”. Sport et Citoyenneté, 22 April 2025. https://www.sportetcitoyennete.com/en/articles-en/themedia-coverage-of-the-special-olympics-world-winter-games-turin-2025.
7. Defrance, Jacques. Sociologie du Sport. 6th edition. Paris: La Découverte, 2011.
8. Delaney, Tim, and Tim Madigan. The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction. 3rd edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2021.
9. Digel, Helmut. Sociological Aspects of Modern Sports. Aachen: Meyer & Meyer Sport, 2013.
10. Dunning, Eric. Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence, and Civilization. London&New York: Routledge, 1999.
11. Duret, Pascal. Sociologie du Sport. 4th edition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France/Humensis, 2019.
12. Edwards, Harry. Sociology of Sport. Homewood, Ill: Dorsey Press, 1973.
13. Eitzen, D. Stanley, ed. Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology. 10th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
14. European Commission. “White Paper on Sport”. European Commission, COM/ /0391 final 2007. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52007DC0391.
15. Giulianotti, Richard, ed. Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Sport. London&New York: Routledge, 2015.
16. Grayson, David. Corporate Social Responsibility and the Media. Paper. Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield School of Management, UK; co-published with Centrum für Corporate Citizenship Deutschland (CCCD), 2009.
17. Hansen, Anders, Simon Cottle, Ralph Negrine, and Chris Newbold. Mass Communication Research Methods. London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 1998. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6020081.
18. Horky, Thomas, Joerg-Uwe Nieland, and Christof Seeger. “The Toy Department Has Grown Up: The 2021 International Sports Press Survey (ISPS) in Comparison to the 2011 Survey”. Journalism and Media 6, no. 2 (2025): 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6020081.
19. Houlihan, Barrie, and Dominic Malcolm, eds. Sport and Society. 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.
20. International Paralympic Committee. “No. 13: Channel 4 Creates a Blueprint for Commercial Paralympic Broadcasting”, December 19, 2012. https://www.paralympic.org/blog/nataliadannenberg- digital-revolution.
21. Jarvie, Grant, James Thornton, and Hector Mackie. Sport, Culture and Society: An Introduction. 3rd edition. London&New York: Routledge, 2018.
22. Karen, David, and Robert E. Washington, eds. Sociological Perspectives on Sport: The Games Outside the Games. 1st edition. London; New York: Routledge, 2015.
23. Leonard, David J. “Book Review: Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies, The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction, Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology, Sociological Perspectives on Sport: The Games Outside the Games and Sociology of North American Sport.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51, no. 1 (2016): 114–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690215617759.
24. McEnnis, Simon. Disrupting Sports Journalism. London&New York: Routledge, 2022.
25. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Repr. London: Routledge, 2010.
26. McQuail, Denis. Journalism and Society. Los Angeles: Sage, 2013.
27. Merritt, Davis “Buzz”. Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the News Is Not Enough. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998.
28. Painter-Morland, Mollie, and Ghislain Deslandes. “Reconceptualizing CSR in the Media Industry as Relational Accountability.” Journal of Business Ethics 143, no. 4 (2017): 665–679. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10551-016-3083-0.
29. Rosen, Jay. “Public Journalism: A Case for Public Scholarship”. Change 27, no. 3 (1995): 34–38.
30. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
31. Rosen, Jay, Davis “Buzz” Merritt, and Lisa Austin. Public Journalism: Theory and Practice — Lessons from Experience. Occasional Paper. Kettering Foundation, 1997.
32. Serazio, Michael. The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
33. Sheppard, Samantha N. “Introduction to ‘Sport and Failure.’” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 43, no. 4 (2019): 267–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723519840505.
34. Shoemaker, Pamela J., and Tim P. Vos. Gatekeeping Theory. New York: Routledge, 2009.
35. Woods, Ron. Social Issues in Sport. Third edition. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2016.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Rosarita Cuccoli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
