MEST 4 Task 2: Strategic sport communications

Quotes:

"This pioneering work theorized that although the mass media may not have the power to tell the audience what to think (as noted by the hypodermic needle model) the mass media do have the power to tell the audience what to think about"

"This process relates to the two-step flow theory and the concept of diffusion of information, which take into account that audiences often acquire mass media messages from personal contacts. Because of the overload of information and mass media messages, information is often spread(diffused) through opinion leaders or other personal contacts. When sports enthusiasts are unable to watch several sporting events occurring on the same evening, they will often rely on their friends and family to provide information on what they might have missed."

"According to George Gerbner's research on cultivation theory, television audience members view the world as more violent than non viewers because of the amount of violence on television they watch. Thus, those who watch the broadcast of brawls in hockey, the Ultimate Fighter Championship and other violent sporting activities view the world as more violent than those who do not watch them"

MEST 4 Task 2: Handbook of sport and media

Quotes:

"In general terms, people view mediated sports because they expect positive emotional impacts from their viewing. These emotional reactions to sport programming are assumed to be dependent upon and governed by the affiliations - or affective dispositions - that viewers hold toward one (or both) of the competing teams. Many scholars actively contend that these afflictions are at the very heart of fanship"

"Some contend that this so-called eustress motivation is theoretically driven by the chronic underestimations experienced by many individuals in their daily lives (Gantz 1981: Gantz & Wenner 1991,1995; Krohn, et al., 1998; Smith, 1988: Wann, 1995; Wann, et al., 1999,2001: Wenner & Gantz, 1998)"

"Another source of the thrill experienced when consuming mediated sports seems to be the perceived violence contained in the action. For example, Bryant, Comisky and Zillmann (1981) directly compared the appeal of violent and non-violent sports. The researchers selected a number of plays from professional football games, classifying them as either low, intermediate and high in violence. Research participants then rated their enjoyment of the plays. As predicted enjoyment increased with the degree of violence in the play"

MEST 4 Task 2: Feminist Sport Studies: sharing experiences joy and pain

Quotes:

"The main premise of standpoint feminism as advocated by Sandra Harding (1990,1998), Nancy Hartstock (1990), and Dorothy Smith (1987), is the focus on the social construction of women's everyday experiences. Central to this feminist epistemology is the idea that reality, as we know it, is constructed through men's eyes and consequently knowledge that we have about women is also constructed through the same falsifying lens."

"Nancy Hartsock (1990), for example, argues that the women are alienated from their "real" experiences because they are forced to use dominant male, conceptual schemes"

"In Sports Studies, standpoint feminism has been advocated openly only by few feminist sport scholars (e.g., Dewer,1993; Krane 2001) and some feminist conclude that "that dominant sociological approaches to the investigation of women in sport... have placed primary emphasis upon the institutional framework within which individuals operate rather than on the variable and more subjective qualitative experiences of women themselves" (Bolin & Granskog 2003)

MEST 4 Task 2: Sports and the traditions of feminism theory essay

Quotes:
Most people do not want to be re-described. They want to be taken on their own terms - taken seriously just as they are and just as they talk... the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete and powerless. consider what happens when a child's precious possession - the little things around which he weaves his fantasies that make him a little different from all other children - are described as 'trash', and thrown away or consider what happens when those possessions are made to look ridiculous alongside the possessions of another richer child.

This suffering is the loss of the opportunity to search for and experience private autonomy and public authority in the social practice of sport such a search is explained by Blake as: "I must create my own system, or be enslaved by another man's"(Rorty, 1991), and such enslavement to the system of male-defined sport is a regular part of the female athlete's experience. The female athlete performs her sport within a limited array of choices of appropriate language of play, all of which make clear her inferiority to the male athlete.

The world does not speak only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that... The moral is not that objective criteria for choice of vocabulary are to be replaced with subjective criteria, reason with will or feeling. It is rather that the notions of criteria and choice...

Link: http://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/uploads/approved/adt-VVUT20040212.121335/public/02whole.pdf

MEST 4 Task 2: Sport and postmodern times

Quotes:
This work, among other things, is an examination of the thrust of sports into our everyday life, a rendering of lived experiences at large in a sea of conflicted and collapsing hierarchies, and an attempted end run around the assault of cultural studies sensibilities as they travel to attach themselves to our interpretations of sport.

Paradoxically, the more the individual is concerned with the reality that is not available to perception , the more most he concentrate his attentions on appearances. (Goffman 1973)

The myth of the fully present subject who could reveal the inner workings of his or her mind to another [and by] the myth of an observer with a method who could somehow prevail upon this subject to reveal her inner world of experience to the kindly knowing scientist.

MEST 4 Task 1: FourFourTwo Magazine

FourFourTwo is a monthly football magazine published by Haymarket and cost £4.20 on average it contains around 162 pages and is has a number of worldwide editions. In 2010 FourFourTwo was reported to have a readership of around 95,000 per issue with 80,000 coming from the UK and the rest worldwide. The magazine gets it's name from the very popular football formation and in their is trying to take some of the same conations, safe, reliable and trustworthy.

MEST 4 Task 1: Ashley Cole

Ashley Cole is an english professional footballer who now plays at left back for Chelsea FC and is revered as one of the best in the world. His public life has been heavily criticised with him appearing regularly in english magazines, newspapers and news stories. He is seen as a villain by the english press and is in turn highly unliked by the public. His football career has also been engulfed in controversy. Despite his talents he is hated for things which questionably shouldn't matter as a footballer; he is a perfect example of how the public obsession with sports stars has exploded.

He begun his football career at Arsenal FC but left the club in very questionable circumstances, he was accused and found guilty of having illegal conversations with Chelsea about a possible transfer and was fined £100,000 later reduced to £75,000. Arsenal fans threw fake £20 notes at him when they next played each other. Also more recently he made a high tackle on Tottenham defender Alan Hutton then turned his back when referee tired to book him, he received a yellow which a lot of critics believed should have been red.

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/a/arsenal/5251684.stm
• http://gunnerblog.com/?p=346

In his personal life stories of the football being involved in a homosexual orgy

surfaced with the player suing The Sun and The News Of The World and a retraction being printed. Also the details of his and pervious wife Cheryl Cole's relationship was very much public knowledge.

MEST 4 Task 1: The Football Factory

The Football Factory is a film based on the novel by John King about the english obsession with football and football violence. It revolves around main character Tommy, played by Danny Dyer, who is questioning the worth of being a football hooligan and the morals of himself and everyone around him as he's reaching 30. Wahida Begum described it as being about more than just football and actually being about finding armies to join, wars to fight and places to belong. The film was awarded a 'Kodak Award for Best Cinematography' and a nomination for a 'Golden Hitchcook'. It was released on May 14th 2004 and gross profits reached £623,138. The film was produced by Vertigo Films and was Rockstar Games first foray into film-making. The film was distributed by Momentum Pictures. Chelsea Football Club Released CFCUK - The Football Factory to coincide with the release of the film.

The Release of the film lead to Bravo TV to air The Real Football Factories a documentary hosted by Danny Dyer which follows the actually british hooligan firms. Later another series was aired called The Real Football Factories International which follows international football firms. Virgin released a spoof with comedian Terry Alderton playing Danny Dire.

http://www.football-hooligans.org/index.html

MEST 4 Task 1: Sky Sports News

Sky Sports News is a 24-hr sports news channel which shows an array of sports mainly focusing on football, giving sports which Sky doesn't broadcast the least amount of air time. It was launched on October 1st 1998 by BSkyB and still runs presently, initially the show was launched with the slogan the home of sports but later lost this and focused on showing sports news. The channel has experienced a number of revamps and changed its name to Skysports.com TV but later changed the name back due to the popularity of the pervious name. Their are a number of shows which come on daily and these include:

• Afternoon Report
• Evening Update
• Good Morning Sports Fans
• Through The Night
• Sky Sports News At Ten

The channel comes on Sky, Virgin, UPC and TalkTalk TV digital channels and now has a HD channel on Sky as-well as an online channel on the internet. The channel used to appear on Freeview as-well but was removed on August 24th 2010 and replaced with Sky 3+1. The change was advertised and was supposedly for improvements to the channel. Also Virgin Media had a dispute with Sky and were unable to negotiate a deal to show the channel. Consequently Virgin with Setanta Sports launched Setanta Sports News on the October 30th 2007, the show went into administration was removed June 23rd 2009. After negotiations had failed the electronic programming guide read 'OLD SKY SPORTS SNOOZE' were the channel used to be on Virgin. The issue has since been resolved and the channel is back on Virgin.

http://gu.com/p/bxgz

Sky Sports News now has a radio station, website, twitter and facebook page. The website launch was promoted with the change of the name and the twitter has 51,937 followers and has made 39,627 tweets.

MEST 4

1: Outline the Text and Topic to be investigated

Topic - why does sports hold so much importance in the current media landscape and is this through public demand or institutional control. Also the amount of media coverage and the topics they address and why.

2: Outline the proposed linked production piece

A range of pages from a sports publication.

3: List at least 2 Media texts that you plan to investigate.

4: Why have you chosen these texts?

Sky Sports News Channel - a news channel which broadcast the sports news 24 hours a day and shows obsessions of a sports fan and the types of stories which are show i.e. sports related, scandal and personal.

FourFourTwo Magazine - Typical sports focused magazine specifically football based and will give me some conventions for linked production piece

5: Apply MIGRAIN to the 2 texts.

sky sports news

M layout of the screen as well as the use of presenters, guests and so on.

I Sponsors i.e gillette. BSkyB the producers of the show and the adverts shown

G Sports News Channel

R of the sportsman, the fans, the clubs and the sports them selves

A Sport Fanatics

I Sports over everything

N the layout of the shows interviews and so on for example hourly report and Lunchtime Report

FourFourTwo

M Layout of the page, adverts and articles

I Hayemarket magazines, number of advertisers and football clubs in the magazine

G Football Magazine

R of the footballers, fans, men, women and teams

A Football Fans

I Football over everything

N articles, words to pictures.

6: What are the issues and debates surrounding these two texts?

Are people too engulfed with sports and how is it effecting people negatively. Does it unite or isolate people. Is sport fixed.

7: State why you believe the 2 texts fit the 'contemporary media landscape'.

Because are both current and on going as well as having large readership and viewership.

8: Discuss the reason this topic area resonates so deeply with you?

Because i follow a number of sports personally and what to know the effects on me as well as how society is possibly being manipulated by the institutions behind the teams.