Authors:Alina Bernstein Abstract: Sports journalists can act as agents of change in society since they have a unique and powerful platform to influence public opinion, raise awareness, advocate for various issues through their reporting and commentary, and overall promote positive change in society. This is perhaps more obvious when looking at recent research from the Nordic countries. However, are sports journalists able to be, and do they even wish to be, agents of change in countries such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Germany, and Israel' Based on academic writing and interviews with media and sports scholars, this article examines the academic discourse that tries to assess to what extent sports journalism may be professionalized in a select number of countries in the European Union and the Middle East. Respondents were asked to speak about how they, as academics, perceived the extent to which sports journalists in each country have substantial autonomy from the economic and political systems and to what extent they are agents of change in their country. PubDate: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:55:18 +010
Authors:Anders Graver Knudsen; Harald Hornmoen, Nathalie Hyde-Clarke Abstract: Sports Journalists as Agents of Change: Shifting Political Goalposts in Nordic Countries identifies and describes changes prevalent in political narratives of sports journalism. Although tensions between professional autonomy and commercial influences in sports journalism persist, shifts in public expectations and increased interest in investigative journalism present new possibilities for sports journalists to reshape this field. The research in this thematic issue examines media content and considers how sports journalists reflect on their role, how gender issues are tied to, and addressed by, that role, and how critical sports journalism develops through engagement with relevant national and international sports journalist associations. PubDate: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:55:18 +010
Authors:Toby Miller Abstract: Nordic cultural and communications studies have long been crucial contributors to numerous fields. Readers of Media and Communication are fortunate to have expert guides for this thematic issue on Sports Journalists as Agents of Change: Shifting Political Goalposts in Nordic Countries. Anders Graver Knudsen, Harald Hornmoen, and Nathalie Hyde‐Clarke have brought together—and themselves contributed to—a veritable tour d’horizon of the topic, with significance both for the region and research more generally. PubDate: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:55:18 +010
Authors:Aage Radmann; Anna Sätre Abstract: This article aims to explore the experiences of female sports journalists in Sweden from a gender perspective. The theoretical framework is inspired by Yvonne Hirdman’s understanding of gender in a binary system and R. W. Connell’s definition of hegemonic masculinity. Data consist of 10 semi-structured interviews with the most prominent female sports journalists in Sweden. The sports journalists in this study express that there has been a change in the media industry, resulting in a better understanding of women’s working conditions within the industry. Even so, the work is still grounded in a culture signified by hegemonic masculinity, where women need to find their own strategies to build a successful career, handle harassment, and cope with other gender-related challenges. PubDate: Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Nathalie Hyde-Clarke; Birgitte Kjos Fonn Abstract: Since 1978, the Norwegian Act for Gender Equality has created a strong emphasis on the importance of equality in all parts of society. This implies equal access to all cultural and welfare activities and services—including sports. In the media, we often see strong reactions to examples of discrimination based on gender, such as during the 2021 European Beach Handball Championship, when the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was fined by the European Handball Federation for refusing to play in bikini bottoms during their final matches. Media attention was given to the ensuing international outrage, which included well-known music artist Pink offering to pay on the team’s behalf in a gesture of solidarity. In November 2021, the sport’s International Federation agreed to allow women to compete in a similar uniform to men. This study analyses Norwegian newspaper coverage of the responses from Norwegian women athletes, politicians, and the international sports/media community from July 2021 to March 2022. It also provides an opportunity to determine to what extent the media framed and participated in calls for change. PubDate: Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Harald Hornmoen; Anders Graver Knudsen Abstract: Prior to the FIFA 2022 World Cup, Nordic news media emphasised their ambitions of persistently covering problematic aspects of this mega-event to be hosted in Qatar, a country subjected to severe criticism of its human rights breaches in the build-up to the event. Focusing on the genre of commentary journalism—a form committed to articulating opinions on social and cultural issues—this study illuminates how key Nordic news media argued for their views on the World Cup 2022. Drawing on empirical material from Danish and Norwegian broadcasters and tabloids, the study analyses commentaries (excluding “sports only” commentaries) published during the event, highlighting the types of arguments, the discourses they articulate or imply, and their attribution of agency to organisational actors. Although a critical and contextualising argumentation runs through commentaries made during the tournament, the reasoning changes its character to such a degree that it is pertinent to categorise the commentaries as reflecting two distinct discursive phases. Argumentation in the first phase sustains a critique of FIFA and the organiser. Arguments were typically formulated as personal attacks but tended to elaborate on their premises by providing fact-based background from investigations of power abuse. The argumentation in the second phase changes its character by more clearly emphasising the action needed to transform current problematic circumstances in accordance with stated goals, not least a reformation of FIFA. The commentators now tend to be less moralising and more diverse and reflective in how they argue for changes in the governance of mega-events in football. PubDate: Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Veera Ehrlén Abstract: Over the last five years, the Finnish sports media has played a key role in disseminating information and stimulating debate on gender equity, sexual harassment, and the structures and culture that perpetuate the latter in sport. Triggered by the Me Too movement, the handling of harassment cases has shifted from the private domain to the public debate in the media, making it political. In this article, I study the perception of the politicisation of harassment within sports media. The article utilises interviews with 16 Finnish sports journalists who have been reporting on harassment cases in national and regional media houses. In the thematic analysis, the facilitators and constraints of harassment reporting are examined in relation to the prevailing power structures, culture, and attitudes in the professional sports environment. While the interviews highlight the changing face of sports journalism and, within it, an ambition to move from entertainment and performance reporting to socio-politically critical journalism, the article also highlights the problematic contradictions embedded in the ambition within sports media to address harassment in sport. The findings of this research suggest that when studying the outcomes of news reporting, it is important to pay attention to news production processes and the gendered aspects that influence them. PubDate: Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Joakim Särkivuori; Antti Laine Abstract: One of the major franchises in Finland’s top division in men’s ice hockey (Liiga), Jokerit Helsinki, sold its home arena and half of its shares to Finnish-Russian oligarchs in 2013. Jokerit also switched to the Russian-led Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and competed there from 2014 to 2022. Russia’s KHL project and its expansion to the West can be viewed as a form of soft power. This study delves into the journalistic coverage of Jokerit during two specific periods: Its early days in the KHL and its later stages when exiting the league. These periods coincide with critical geopolitical events, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), Belarusian protests (2020–2021), and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (2022). Our data consists of Jokerit-related articles in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat as well as interviews of the journalists who followed the team closely. We explore the critical socio-political coverage of Jokerit in Helsingin Sanomat during these periods and investigate whether the sports journalists recognized the broader geopolitical context of the KHL project and, if so, how this influenced their reporting. Utilizing the framing theory, we identified five frames under which to divide the articles: (a) sports events, (b) international relations, (c) power and governance, (d) business, and (e) unity. The sports event frame predominated during the early KHL era, whereas international relations and power and governance frames only emerged later. These shifts were not initiated by sports journalists but resulted from the efforts of journalists in other fields and increased the societal scrutiny of ties to Russia. PubDate: Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Kirsten Frandsen Abstract: Taking the FIFA World Cup in Qatar as a point of departure, this article analyses the changing role of national associations of sports journalists in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Introducing the concept of meta-journalistic discourse and well-established media system theories, it is argued that Nordic sports journalism’s negotiations of professional practices and standards are shaped by a particular media systemic context with distinct Nordic welfare state-oriented features. One such feature is a tradition of using collective, organized social groups, like democratically based voluntary associations, as instruments for social change. The empirical study explores this through a qualitative thematic analysis of the changing structures, identities, and practices of the national associations of sports journalists across the three countries. This illustrates how the organizations in particular during the last two decades have started very similar processes of transformation away from being mainly social clubs. The associations have used their collective frameworks and bargaining power to ensure independent journalists’ access to sports organizations and athletes, and they have engaged in negotiations of what sports journalism is and what constitutes sports journalism in a sports media landscape shaped by strong combined forces of digitization and politicization. PubDate: Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 +010