[Commlist] Call for Abstracts: Special Issue at MedieKultur - Sports events in a transmedia landscape

***Call for Abstracts: Special Issue at MedieKultur - Sports events in a 
transmedia landscape***

Guest editors:
Professor Kirsten Frandsen, Aarhus University, Denmark,  and Associate 
professors, Line Nybro Petersen and Mogens Olesen, University of 
Copenhagen, Denmark.

Contact (olesen /at/ hum.ku.dk) <mailto:(olesen /at/ hum.ku.dk)> for further information

Issue editor: Anne Mette Thorhauge, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Abstracts should contain a maximum of 1500 words excluding references. 
It should include the research question(s) addressed, theoretical and 
methodological approaches. Abstracts should be submitted as a Word 
document via our journal system at www.mediekultur.dk 
<http://www.mediekultur.dk>

Deadline for abstract submission: February 15, 2023

Acknowledgement of acceptance for full paper submission: March 15, 2023

Deadline for full paper: June 30, 2023

Expected publication: November 2023

No payments or Article Processing Charges (APC) from authors or their 
institutions will be required.

Please visit MedieKultur’s website for further information on how to 
submit your abstract: 
https://tidsskrift.dk/mediekultur/announcement/view/1007 
<https://tidsskrift.dk/mediekultur/announcement/view/1007>

*

*

Sport and sport events are in many ways among the most popular media 
phenomena today. Television broadcasters continue to invest heavily to 
secure exclusive live coverage rights for both their broadcasting and 
streaming platforms, while global tech platforms and live sports 
streaming platforms, like Amazon Prime, Facebook, DAZN and Tencent, have 
started intervening in the rights coverage markets (Hutchins et al. 
2019). As television continues to have a primary anchoring role for both 
organizers and audiences of big traditional sports events (Hutchins & 
Sanderson 2017), social networking services extend the narration and 
experience of sports and events, making sport one of the most discussed 
topics on social network platforms, which in turn informs content in 
television programming. However traditional sports events are now 
accompanied by the proliferation of e-sport events like the League of 
Legends World Championship and the Fortnite World Cup which also 
encompass distinct fan cultures and production and distribution 
strategies across many platforms.

Sport events in the digital environment must therefore be understood as 
a more diverse range of events, where audiences engage in new sports and 
in new converging practices that can be termed ‘participatory liveness’ 
(Frandsen, Jerslev & Mortensen, 2022). They are transmedia events, like 
in the case of Tour de France where a multiplicity of audio and visual 
media are involved in both production and reception processes. 
Organization of sport events involve a combined orchestration of 
activities and strategic interests of multiple agents, including sport 
organizations, media organizations, global platforms, gaming producers, 
political bodies, local organizers, sponsors, tourist organizations, 
audiences and fans. Thus sports events are central for processes of 
promotion, datafication, platformization and intensified commodification 
as well. Through their presence as spectators at the games and through 
television viewing and participatory practices online (Jenkins 2008, 
Rowe & Hutchins 2014), audiences and fans actively contribute to the 
creation of major sport competitions as media events (Dayan & Katz 1994).

While often constituting festive and ritualized expressions of imagined 
communities with shared values, sport events are increasingly used as 
vehicles of soft power (Nye 2004) on the geopolitical scene and emerge 
as stages for public discussions and expressions of topical political 
and cultural themes including mental health, identity, gender, race, 
climate and human rights. Issues of conflict and protests against 
hegemonic ideologies and structures seem to become more prominent in the 
mediated discourses creating the events as media events. In particular, 
the preparations for two mega-events in 2022, the FIFA World Cup in 
Qatar and the Winter Olympics in Beijing, have been dominated by broader 
political controversies. These developments are underpinned by continued 
globalization and digitization and point to a need for further 
discussion of the sport event as media event (Hepp & Couldry 2010).

This issue welcomes examinations of sport events with particular 
attention to the role of media and platforms in processes of production 
of events and/or in related fan strategies and practices – this may 
include discussions of global and local interests surrounding sport 
events, and of fan activist movements emerging from or using sport 
events to promote specific debates.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

·Digital activism and movements directed at or provoked by sport events

·Sports organizations’ transmedia production strategies

·Strategic collaborations between sport organizations, local organizers 
and politicians

·Transmedia perspectives on the relations between mass media and social 
network media

·Fan cultures’ digital and non-digital practices in relation to sport events

·E-sports events as media events

·Sport events on social media platforms

·The role of affect and emotions among media and fan reactions to sport 
events

·Sport as events for and possibilities for promoting political issues

·Sport as events for and possibilities for creating or strengthening 
senses of imagines communities

·Regional and global differences in receptions and interpretations of 
sport events

·Theoretical approaches to sports events as media events or subject to 
processes of platformization and/or datafication.

References:

Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1992). Media events: The live broadcasting of 
history. Harvard University Press.

Frandsen, K., Jerslev, A. & Mortensen, M. (2022). Media events in the 
age of global, digital media: Centring, scale, and participatory 
liveness. Nordic Journal of Media Studies, 4 (1), 1-18.

Hepp, A., & Couldry, N. (2010). Introduction. In N. Couldry, A. Hepp, & 
F. Krotz (Eds.), Media events in a global age (pp. 1–21). Routledge. 
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203872604

Hutchins, B., Li, B. & Rowe, D. (2019).  Over-the-top sport: live 
streaming services, changing coverage rights markets and the growth of 
media sport portals. Medie, Culture & Society, 41(7), 975-994.

Hutchins, B., & Sanderson, J. (2017). The primacy of sports television: 
Olympic media, social networking services, and multi-screen viewing 
during the Rio 2016 Games. Media International Australia, 164(1), 32–42. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X17707065

Jenkins, R. (2008). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media 
Collide. New York University Press.

Rowe, D. & Hutchins, B. (2014). Globalization and online audiences. In 
Billings, A.C. & Harding, M. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Sport and New 
Media (pp. 7-18). Routledge.

Nye, J. S. (2004). Soft power : The means to success in world politics. 
PublicAffairs.

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