Description
Book SynopsisStories of Sports: Critical Literacy in Media Production, Consumption, and Dissemination discusses how media demonstrates privilege, policing, stereotypes, confirmation bias, and objectification in a world where the role of athletics in Western society speaks to privilege and power. Contributors use a critical media lens to analyze texts, including newspapers, magazines, film, television, social media, and sportscasts to demonstrate to readers the ways in which sports stories reinforce or disrupt patterns of power and the ways that power is enacted. This book questions the role of the sports-industrial complex in our society and argues that, while healthy competition and physical health can come from bodily exertion, corruption can contaminate these benefits with the wielding of influence and the acquisition of cultural and financial capital. Contributors examine how the ways that resources are allocated, the coverage of certain sports and athletes, and how viewers view competitive arenas speak to power and privilege in ways that can affect both athletes and athletic stakeholders, highlighting the importance of critically examining sports media. Scholars of media studies and sports will find this book particularly useful.
Trade ReviewThis book offers a helpful introduction to the practice of critical media literacy (CML). The anthology is intended for an audience of secondary school teachers, youth coaches, and general readers who consume sport media and may wonder about what is missing and why. The first chapter provides an excellent overview of CML while also outlining a clear, practical application of the concept and related analysis to the media representations of Colin Kaepernick's activism during the performance of the US national anthem throughout the 2016 National Football League season.... Another chapter creatively approaches representations of diabetic athletes using a CML lens.... Overall, this is a helpful introductory text that is well suited for its target audience. Recommended.
* Choice Reviews *
As voracious consumers of popular culture, our society clearly determines what it values by the narratives constructed and propagated in media spaces, none more so than sport. This collection of essays brilliantly highlights the importance of teaching and using critical media lenses to recognize the influence of the sport narratives explicitly told in popular culture, while also acknowledging the implicitly hidden and ignored narratives intentionally excluded from public consumption and consideration. Representation matters, and context is everything.
-- Shelbie Witte, Oklahoma State University
This book cured whatever smugness I might have felt as a researcher and teacher of critical media literacy. Although I consider sport a text to be read, much as I do a novel, documentary, comedy show, or class discussion, it is clear after reading this book that I had simply looked in all the wrong places for concepts in need of critique. Beginning with the book’s foreword and continuing throughout, previously missed opportunities for examining media production, consumption, and dissemination fairly jump off the pages. This is a must-read in an era where crowdsourcing can easily bury micro-aggressions, leading to bullying or worse.
-- Donna Alvermann, University of Georgia
This book collects the work of leading thinkers on critical media literacy and sports, providing countless ways in for educators (or teacher educators) trying to find the right approach to engage their students in becoming critical consumers and creators in the world as they find it. What is on one hand intimidating and amazing is how much work there is to do in this focus area, and just how much potential it contains for justice work to happen in America’s classrooms.
-- Christian Z. Goering, University of Arkansas
Table of ContentsForeword
Andraya N. Carter
Introduction
Katie Dredger, Crystal L. Beach, Katherin Garland, and Cathy Leogrande
Chapter 1: Using Critical Media Literacy Pedagogy to Analyze Colin Kaepernick’s Athletic Activism
Katherin Garland
Chapter 2: Selling Patriotism On and Off the Field: Media Connections Between Baseball, the Military, and the Government
Brian Sheehy
Chapter 3: Relationships Between Youth-Sports Coaches and Athletes: Messages from the “Best” Sports-Related Films
Luke Rodesiler, Mark A. Lewis, and Alan Brown
Chapter 4: Truth Be Told: The Mutual Responsibilities of Artists and Consumers
Mark A. Fabrizi
Chapter 5: Telling the Story of Youth, Sports, and Disability in Friday Night Lights
Ewa McGrail, J. Patrick McGrail, and Alicja Rieger
Chapter 6: Transforming Diabetes Stigma: The Role of Counternarrative in Sports Media
Cynthia Martin
Chapter 7: Languaging Actions in Sports Media and Students’ Writing About Sports
Richard Beach and Limarys Caraballo
Chapter 8: Performance, Style, and Substance: The Female Athlete
Crystal L. Beach and Katie Dredger
Chapter 9: Booth, Sidelines or Studio: How Place Defines Women Sports Broadcasters on Television
Cathy Leogrande
About the Contributors
