ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, the volume of journalistic sport reports has rapidly increased. According to Sage (2010), the media’s presence in contemporary society now involves two social roles: to communicate information about (sports) people and (sports) events, and to provide entertainment. Maguire and colleagues argue that mediated sport as entertainment even plays an important part in our social existence and shapes our understandings of social life (Maguire, Jarvie, Mansfield, and Bradley, 2002). Consequently, the media are not neutral communicators. Rather, sport as a cultural and mediated phenomenon avails the inscription of national, local, and global meanings that should be critically examined. Furthermore, sport through the journalistic lens has become a means to portray ideal images of selves, others, and organizations to large audiences. The cultural omnipresence of sport communication through mass media has developed into an institutional complex of enormous social, cultural, political, and economic importance (Sage, 2010).
