[Commlist] Call for Abstracts: Sports Communication in Transition

Call for Abstracts “Sports Communication in Transition”

The myriad technological, economic, and social changes that have been 
going on in contemporary societies have had a dramatic impact on sports 
communication, bringing new issues to deal with and new actors coming 
into what was previously in a European context considered to be mainly a 
domain of journalism. In this conference, hosted by the Faculty of 
Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague on November 9 - 10, 2023, 
the ECREA Temporary Working Group on Communication and Sport calls for 
papers exploring the transition of sports communication from various 
perspectives. We would like to help expand the contemporary research on 
topics from different scholarly fields like media studies, cultural 
studies, sports journalism studies and sports strategic and PR 
communication, and sports audience studies, not necessarily only from 
Europe.

The conference will feature one online panel that will allow 
participation of a select number of researchers who are unable to travel 
to Prague.

With regard to the overarching topic of the conference, here are many 
issues that have arisen in recent years, including:

  * the massive development of so called in-house or team media, which
    in combination with direct usage of social media and many access
    restrictions, partially enforced by COVID-19 pandemics, but welcomed
    by major sports organisations, resulted in sports journalists
    struggling to find an original and interesting story more than ever;
  * the strategic and often performative use of new media platforms by
    hitherto marginalized individuals or groups in sport
  * the cases of cross of interest, when underpaid journalists have to
    start with moonlighting at PR positions;
  * the wide reach and independence of successful athletes with their
    own channels (specially social media);
  * the increase of sports bloggers that was enabled by the
    technological development when everyone can create their successful
    website or podcast and enrich the sports journalistic field from its
    peripheries, sometimes even heading directly to its centre,
    reversing existing power balance;
  * the discussions whether sports journalists and athletes should or
    should not speak up when for example the sports events are organised
    by countries where human rights have been repeatedly violated and
    their leaders only want to whitewash their reputation, or female
    athletes or spectators are not allowed to participate;
  * the audiences (e.g., increasingly fragmented sports media
    repertoires in high-choice media environments and massive
    uncertainty about audience's expectations of sports media content)

This list is not exclusive, and we call for papers which in a broad 
sense deal with shifts in sports communication, including both 
theoretical and analytical perspectives on the tensions, conflicts, many 
dilemmas and negotiations involved, focusing on the sports communication 
creators, the sports media content itself or its audiences.

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words (excluding references) 
submitted in English language by June 11, 2023 via email to the main 
organiser Dr. Veronika Macková ((veronika.mackova /at/ fsv.cuni.cz) 
<mailto:(veronika.mackova /at/ fsv.cuni.cz)>). The submission should be anonymized.

The abstracts can be both for individual papers and panel proposals. 
Each panel proposal must include an abstract of the cover topic and the 
titles of 4-5 involved papers with the names of the authors. Each paper 
in the panel needs to be presented by people from different 
universities. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for 
individual paper or a panel proposal.

To support the integration of as many scholars as possible, we will hold 
approx. 5 onsite panels and 1 online panel for the colleagues who have 
difficulties travelling to Prague on the dates of the conference. Please 
indicate clearly whether the abstract is for onsite or online 
presentation. Authors will be notified about acceptance by July 15, 2023.

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