During the late nineteenth century American reformers crafted a physical culture designed to help adjust their nation to the social changes fostered by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. The creators of modern sport considered athletics a "technology" for building a modern liberal civilization. Their "sporting republic" quickly gained a prominent place in American life. America's Athletic Missionaries examines the impact that United States participation in the Olympic Games, from 1896 to 1936, had on American culture. The idea of the sporting republic united politics and the strenuous life. In the Olympics Americans discovered a particularly rich environment for both athletic and political demonstrations. The architects of the sporting republic thought that sport could create livable urban environments, fight crime, promote democracy, Americanize the recently acquired empire, and assimilate immigrant populations. American Olympic teams earned the moniker of "America's athletic missionaries" for their performances at the first five Olympic Games. American Olympians enjoyed the active support of the political, business and academic elite. Lionized by the press and showered with public acclaim, the Olympians became symbols of the power of sport in channeling human energy in socially productive directions. During the 1920s the role of the sporting republic underwent a transformation. Sport, as had many other facets of Progressive reform, had been accepted as part of the orthodoxy of American values. But the political nature of sport changed. Abandoned by intellectuals who associated it with middle-class materialism, sport was increasingly cast as a form of escapism and disassociated from political action. The new version of sport became one of the totems of consumer culture. The press depicted the Olympic Games of the 1920s as sensational spectacles, without any significant political overtones. By the 1930s Americans had rediscovered the political uses of sport. Much of the world had come to view the Olympic Games as tests of national strength and many countries devoted great resources in the pursuit of athletic conquest. This study examines the relationship between political and physical culture, the uses of athletic ideology in the construction of American civilization, and the function of sport as a cultural tool.

The introduction of Social Media (SM) into sports communications in professional leagues is disrupting the traditional methods of sports media relations. In the past, teams used websites to post information for fans, but it was strictly a one-way format of communication whereby a story was posted for fans to read. To fully engage with this new communication channel, the sports communications departments in professional leagues have begun to use SM to communicate directly with fans through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Currently, SM like Twitter allows the team communication departments to communicate directly with fans in an interactive two-way format that is not mediated by a reporter or someone from a traditional media outlet. In addition, the open format of SM means that media relations staff are no longer the only intermediary between the media and the players; through the use of SM like Twitter, a professional athlete can now communicate directly to fans without gatekeepers like the media or the sports communications department of the team. This thesis will explore how SM has changed media relations from several different perspectives. The first perspective is related to the risks that are associated with the use of SM by professional athletes: without an intermediary or a filter for athlete-fan communication, many athletes have caused irreparable damage to their reputation and the reputation of their team. The second perspective is related to the benefits for teams that use SM as a platform to connect with fans: the ability to connect with fans using SM is new to sports communications and represents an interactive one-to-one and one-to-many mode of communication through which the fan can directly communicate with the team. Finally, this research will look at how Twitter has changed media relations in sports from the perspective of the lived experiences of people who work in sports media. To explore the risks associated with athletes’ use of social media, this research used Situational Crisis Communication Theory as a theoretical framework to explore reputation-damaging incidents that occurred through social media. The study reviewed national media stories reported in North America from 2009 to 2010 that were perceived to have negative impact on athletes’ reputation. In total, 17 incidents were reviewed — seven incidents in particular demonstrated the athlete as the source of the SM crisis. Through the review and categorization of these 17 situations, the study was able to identify four broad categories of situations that a sports communication manager needs to be prepared for. The four categories identified were “Rookie Reporter”, “Team Insider”, “Opportunist”, and “Imposter”. Each of these categories are invaluable for team communication managers to recognize in order to address the risks associated with social media. To explore the benefits associated with the communications department’s use of social media, this research used Uses and Gratification theory as a theoretical framework to explore how and why fans followed team Twitter accounts. This study was conducted in partnership with the Canadian Football League (CFL) and a total of 526 people responded to an online survey that was tweeted out to them for their feedback. The results of the survey indicated several significant findings — in particular, the phenomenon of converged sports fan consumption was identified, which has not been previously acknowledged in academic research. The phenomenon of converged sports fan refers to the multi-screen environment whereby a sports fan decides where, when, and how they want to consume sporting content. This research identified that in-game consumption of SM while watching television and the mobile consumption of SM are both dominant ways for fans to interact with their teams. This multi-modal format of connecting with the team supports the idea of Henry Jenkins’s Black Box Fallacy (2006, p. 13): as teams move forward in developing communications platforms to reach their fans, they will need to recognize that all channels can and do work together. In order to further understand how Twitter has changed sports media relations, the study used long semi-structured interviews with a phenomenological research design to understand how Twitter has impacted sports media relations. The phenomenological analysis of the informant interviews suggested that Twitter is the source of three themes of change: general media relations, mechanical job functions, and other changes specific to sports media relations. The significance of Twitter’s impact on sports media relations cannot be understated. With the ubiquitous use of SM like Twitter, it is important to understand how sports media relations can use SM to manage the image of their respective teams and athletes. After looking at SM and sports from three different perspectives, the pivotal finding was the role that Twitter and mobile communications play in ‘flattening’ sports media relations. Similar to how Friedman (2006) argued that the convergence of the personal computer drove globalization, Twitter and the increased adoption of mobile communications have flattened the role of sports media relations. This research will explain how the flattening of sports media relations happened and what the implications might be for sports media professionals.

This thesis explores representations of Paralympians within media and advertising. Scholarly research on disability is extremely limited, with current research focusing on print media, and few studies going as far as to perform a discourse analysis. Media representations play a prevalent role in constructing “disability” and have the power to define what it means to be a disabled person. Using a poststructural theoretical framework, I undertake a critical discourse analysis of television advertisements produced by Nike and Visa to uncover what narratives regarding disability are circulating with regularity. I find these advertisements featuring Paralympians serve to reproduce the myth of the “supercrip”, failing to acknowledge the complexity of individual experiences of those living with disabilities. Further, the simultaneous celebration and marginalization of Paralympians, a key dialectic found within these advertisements is indicative of a larger polemics circulating with regularity regarding people with disabilities within our increasingly neoliberal society. / v, 117 leaves ; 29 cm

This project examines the relationship between football, the media and the constitution and reconstitution of cultural identities within Glasgow and Liverpool. It explores the extent to which a range of contemporary religious, political and national identities can be understood by focusing on the role that football and the support for particular clubs, play in their formation. Throughout, there is a concern with the relationship between supporters, the clubs, the media and identity-formation. There is also a realisation of the importance of placing this material within an histo rical framework, which emphasises how political, economic and social changes have all shaped the specific relationships in each city. This is achieved through the use of a number of case studies. The geographical areas used for the studies are the west of Scotland and the north-west of England, with specific attention focused on the cities of Glasgow and Liverpool and the football supporters within these cities. There has long been a strong connection between football and a range of social identities in these two cities. This study examines the theoretical debates regarding issues of the formation of identity in contemporary society, and argues for the need to have contextually grounded studies informing these broader theoretical discussions. This project, focusing on religious, political and cultural expressions of collective identity, emphasises the continual need to be wary of unproblematically allocating a central role to the media in any process of identity-formation. It suggests that in the cities of Glasgow and Liverpool today a range of more socially and historically grounded factors are crucial in understanding the configurations of collective expression which football support provides for many in these cities.

This thesis aimed to extend knowledge concerning the role of social support in youth sport. A literature review was conducted to identify the current status of knowledge in the area through a systematic review of studies applicable to social support in youth sport. The findings provided up-to-date knowledge in the study area and informed a two-part intervention-based study designed to determine the feasibility of whether an intervention has the potential to be run again in a controlled trial. The first (quantitative) part of the study aimed to determine the effect of the intervention on participants and to address theoretically important considerations relating to the specific role of perceived and received support in a youth sport context. Results demonstrated that changes in pre and post intervention values (i.e. intentions to drop out, social identity, received support, encountered, basic needs satisfaction) were non significant except for perceived support. The findings relating to a change in perceived support demonstrated that higher perceived available support was significantly associated with lower levels of intentions to drop out at the end of the study. Furthermore, social identity emerged as a significant mediating factor in explaining the association between changes in perceived support and intentions to drop out. The first part of the study also examined the stress buffering effect of received support. Findings demonstrated that stress encountered had a significant main effect on intentions to drop out. Moreover, received support was shown to exert a significant but small buffering effect on the relationship between stress encountered on intentions to drop out. The purpose of the second (qualitative) part of the study was to examine whether the intervention needed to be refined or adapted to make it more acceptable to users or more relevant to the specific context in which it was delivered. The findings revealed a range of key factors relating to perceived (e.g., access to games, games format) and received support (e.g., peer to peer support, increased confidence to participate, stress encountered, stress removed). The results of the pre and post analyses combined with the qualitative findings in the study suggest that the social support intervention has the potential to be tested in a controlled trial. The discussion focuses on the current status of the research area, limitations, suggested practical implications and future research directions. The findings highlight the importance of developing perceived support and social identity in youth sport and received support in buffering stressors typically associated with youth sport drop out.

Thesis (MTech (Tourism and Events Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2011. / In recent years, events have shown rapid growth as types of attraction within destinations, with such events creating a favourable image of a host destination, expanding the traditional tourist season, spreading tourist demand more evenly through an area and attracting foreign and domestic visitors (Keyser, 2002:18). As such, events are starting to become an established element and major part of tourism growth and marketing strategies. East London (in the Eastern Cape, South Africa) has hosted a number of successful events (Buffalo City Tourism, 2010) however no known social impact studies related to the community of East London are known to have been conducted. The purpose of this study was to address this gap and to evaluate the social impacts of events tourism on the East London community. The overall research question in this study was, What are the socio-cultural impacts of events tourism on East London? This was a quantitative study that utilised a survey to collect the data. The sampling frame was the community at the Spec-Savers Ironman South Africa Triathlon 2010 held in East London. Potential participants were included in the sample through utilising a random sampling method. The research instrument consisted of four sections, namely demographic profiling (age, gender, race, marital status, education and income), overall event impact perceptions, reasons for spectator participation, and the social impact perceptions of the respondents. The event attendees were interviewed. No incentive was offered for participation, and participants were assured of the confidentiality of their responses.

Orientador: Paulo Cesar Montagner / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação Fisica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T22:33:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hirama_LeopoldoKatsuki_M.pdf: 2198998 bytes, checksum: fe861fdf910d454b6036a2e39d0438dc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: O crescimento do número e intervenções das ONGs (organizações não-governamentais) no cenário nacional destaca uma outra área de desenvolvimento do esporte. Chamado esporte social ou educacional, ele é tratado como ferramenta que contribui para a formação do público foco, sejam crianças, adolescentes, adultos ou velhos em projetos sociais. Investigar qual o tratamento pedagógico indicado que este esporte pode sofrer e quais características a serem consideradas ao se planejar um programa social através do esporte foram os objetivos desta pesquisa. Orientando-se pela etnografia e utilizando-se da metodologia da história oral, foi foco do estudo o impacto sobre a vida de um grupo de jovens moradores da comunidade de Heliópolis que participaram de um projeto socioeducativo que utilizava o esporte como eixo norteador entre os anos de 2003 a 2005. / Abstract: The growth of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) units and interventions, considering the Brazilian scenario, brings out another area of sports. Known as social or educational sport, it is regarded as an instrument that contributes to the development of its public - which can be children, teenagers, adults or old people - in social projects. Investigating which pedagogic treatment the sport should get and which characteristics should be considered in order to plan a social program through sport were the goals of this research. Oriented by ethnography and making use of oral history methodology, the focus of the study was the impact on the life of a young people group from Heliópolis community brought by their participation in a socialeducational project that used sports as main basis between years 2003 and 2005. / Mestrado / Ciencia do Desporto / Mestre em Educação Física

The thesis identifies a lack of research in the general subject area of sports geography and in particular Scottish sports geography. A new conceptual framework for the analysis of the geography of sport is developed from an extensive review of the literature. This framework is then used to illustrate three case studies of the sports landscape in Scotland at three geographical scales. Case study one considers a national sport and traces curling, from its origin to the international Olympic sport it is today, through time and the geographical concepts of space, place, and environment. The sport of curling is shown to be a distinctively Scottish despite influences of modernisation and internationalisation. At the regional scale, case study two identifies two key sporting attributes. Recent survey data are used to highlight regional variations in sports club membership and volunteering in sport. For example the highest rate of sports volunteering in the population is found in the north of Scotland, while the biggest contribution to the sport volunteer workforce comes from large urban towns nearer the central belt. Finally case study three examines a local sportscape. Factors relating to the local population and to the individuals within the sportscape are combined to propose a model for the analysis of sports places. Each case study has added to the knowledge of sports geography in Scotland, however the real benefit of the thesis is to the overall understanding of sports geographical analysis. A new conceptual framework has been developed for the geographical analysis of sport and this has been applied to three case studies to illustrate its efficacy. This is a first Geography of Sport in Scotland.

Social support has a great impact on injured NCAA athletes' complete psychological and physical recovery. When individuals, such as the coach, athletic trainer, teammates, and family, incorporate social support in the recovery process the injured athlete's attitude and belief system is positively influenced. The coach and athletic trainer have been specifically researched and proven to be influential in certain types of social support, but the family has not been significantly studied in the past. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the six different types of social support given by the family in comparison to the social support given by the head coach, athletic trainer, and teammates to the injured NCAA Dl athlete regarding the athlete's satisfaction level of each type of support provided, as well as how each support contributed to the athlete's recovery. An additional purpose is to examine the quality of the six different types of social support given by the family. This study was carried out by a quantitative survey (Modified Form of the Social Support Survey) in which NCAA athletes from a private, Dl institution who met specific criteria were the subjects. The results were analyzed through inferential statistics using multiple one-way ANOV As. The results showed according to the athlete, the family and athletic trainer provided the highest levels of all six types of social support compared to the coach and teammates. The coach was the least influential in the social support network according to the athlete. In conclusion, the family provides an integral role within all types of social support. The family should be included in the rehabilitation process of the athlete for a healthy psychological and physical recovery of the injured NCAA athlete.

M. Tech. (Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Volunteering is a core component of sport service delivery and remains essential to the viability of the sport system in many sport organisations and communities. To this end, it has become incumbent for them to ensure that a sufficient pool of volunteers exists. Despite this assertion that volunteers in sport organisations are considered such a valuable resource, they are increasingly scarce and there is a considerable debate about the underlying structure or dimensionality of volunteer motives. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to examine motives for volunteering in sport organisations within Gauteng province and its relationships with volunteer commitment and volunteer satisfaction. This research drew from the convergence of the social exchange and self-determination theories that were used in this study to provide a theoretical understanding as to why people engage in volunteer work and the outcomes thereof. In order to achieve the primary objective of the study, a quantitative research approach was adopted and a cross-sectional descriptive survey was utilised. A non-probability convenience sampling procedure was also adopted. Prior to the main survey data collection, a pilot study was undertaken by administering a questionnaire to 40 participants who did not form part of the main survey. The main survey data was thereafter acquired from 270 volunteers from conveniently selected sport organisations within Gauteng province through a structured self-administered questionnaire. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS version 26.0) and the reliability and validity analysis yielded satisfactory results in terms of the measuring instrument. Descriptive statistics were also computed to summarise the data into usable information by making use of frequencies, means and standard deviations. Exploratory factor analysis was used to statistically aggregate the large number of observed measures (28 items) relating to independent variable (volunteer motives) into a smaller set of three unobserved (latent) variables called factors while regression and correlation analysis were undertaken to establish the relationships among the study constructs in line with the objectives of the study. Results fromcorrelation and regression analysis respectively (r = 0.440; β= .410) revealed that volunteer motives significantly contribute towards enhancing volunteer commitment among volunteers in sport organisations. Furthermore, the study’s results indicated that volunteer commitment, in turn, contributes towards volunteer satisfaction of volunteers in sport organisations (r = 0.561; β= .561). Based on these results, this study recommends, among others, that management of sport organisations should explore the effectiveness of implementing an internal system of self-evaluation as a starting point to examine motives for volunteering. Furthermore, it is recommended that sport organisation management should develop an organisational culture which assigns authority and responsibility to sport volunteers. The study concludes by affirming the achievement of the study’s objectives, highlighting its limitations as well as identifying future research opportunities.