ABSTRACT
This chapter will trace the development of media sport, offer a brief introduction to media analysis and outline how such analysis has been applied to media representation of sport.
Sport itself has no essentialist, pre-given definition, indeed it is very difficult to arrive at a consensus as to what ‘sport’ is. Fierce argument can and does rage over whether snooker, darts, cycling, fishing, synchronised swimming, skating and professional wrestling are regarded as sports. Some would wish to exclude ‘professional’ sport from the category. The task of formulating an adequate definition has eluded philosophers. The term has its own origins, and has changed its meanings regularly. In the early nineteenth century it would have included field sports and cruel sports but not many of the activities we now commonly associate with the term.
