Sports Communication Scholarship on the Move: Building a New Research Agenda on Mobile Media and Technologies

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

When people talk about media, communication and sports, they are now often talking about mobile media, communication and sports. For instance, the US measurement and analytics firm comScore reports that mobile technologies, particularly smartphones, tablets and mobile apps, account for 69 percent of all digital media time spent by consumers, with mobile media usage having passed 1 trillion minutes each month (as of March 2016). This shift towards mobile is also reflected in the consumption of global media events such as the men’s FIFA World Cup. According to FIFA, an estimated 122 million fans connected with official 2014 World Cup content on a mobile device, making “mobile media consumption as natural as flicking through the channels on the TV”. These developments present far reaching consequences for the organisations and individuals who play, watch and profit from sporting competition and activity.

Shifting assemblages of mobile and wireless technologies are changing the flow of communication, content and data in global media markets and throughout social worlds. As a result, an increasing number of research questions asked about media sports – of expression, production, representation, consumption and practice – now intersect through mobile technologies in some way given the embedding of mobile devices and networks throughout everyday life. This international panel of scholars highlights the need for a new research agenda in sports communication that engages substantively with these developments. A growing array of mobile media, technologies and networks are altering the dynamics and logics of media sports, including apps, audio and video services, social networking, wearable technologies, sensor networks, locative media, data analytics, telecommunications infrastructures, drones, and augmented and virtual reality.

Four interlocking dimensions of the changes described here are examined by members of this panel: (i) the political economy of global media sports and mobile communication (Brett Hutchins, Monash University, Australia); (ii) mobile media fan interaction and consumption patterns (Andy Billings, University of Alabama, US); (iii) the features of app-based media practices (Kirsten Frandsen, Aarhus University, Denmark), and; (iv) algorithmically generated and sensor based experiences in lifestyle sports (Clifton Evers, Newcastle University, UK). The panel also features a discussant who locates the developments discussed by the panel within the overall trajectory of the media sports cultural complex in a mobile age; that is, what mobile media and communication mean for social worlds awash with sporting symbols, images, forms, spaces and bodies (David Rowe, Western Sydney University, Australia).

Sub Unit

• Sports Communication

Individual Presentations

• From Media Rights and Content to Mobile Data and Infrastructures: The Impact of Mobile Technologies on Global Media Sports Markets - Brett Hutchins, Monash University

• The Venn Diagram of New Sports Media: Mobile Use, Second Screen, and Social Media in the New Age of Fan Interaction - Andrew C. Billings, U of Alabama

• Self-Tracking Among Recreational Athletes – Mediatization, Mobilization and Blurring Boundaries - Kirsten Frandsen, Aarhus U

• Strike Mission! Fluid Assemblages of Mobile Media, Masculinity and Surfing - Clifton Evers, University of Newcastle

Respondent

• David Rowe, U of Western Sydney