ABSTRACT
Old and new forms of media play a fundamental role in the consumption, ownership and delivery of sport. The specificity of sport and its relative autonomy in decisions concerning sport have been fundamental to the development of sport, and yet the lucrative power of the media has threatened this relationship in certain sports. Sports will argue that they need a space in which the social and commercial world attach value to sport and, therefore, a dependency on the forms of media to achieve this goal are seen as important. At the same time, the digital age is distinguished by a rapid transformation in the kinds of technological mediation through which forms of sport and people communicate. The traditional face-toface sports reporter using his or her landline telephone calls and postal mail to report on sport has been joined by email, mobile telephone calls, text messaging, instant chat messaging, web boards, social networks, photo sharing, video sharing, multiplayer online gaming and much more. While sport is still challenged by the positives and negatives of the power of television sponsorship and endorsements, new forms of media also present new issues. Yet, the fundamental purpose of communication technologies still remains in that it allows people to exchange messages without being physically co-present.
