What will our feature be about ?

What will our feature be about?

SportsNerd will be an informational, educational, newsworthy feature blog about sports in the context of media convergence. The sports social media landscape has transformed dramatically over the last few years and it continues to change at a rapid pace. Currently sports media is a very exciting industry; as the grassroots of the traditional media representation and corporate media interweave in such a way that present the balance of power shift in unpredictable ways among athletes, media producers, and media consumers. SportsNerd will be:

-        Analysing the cooperation/linkage amongst the three – athletes, media producers (by media producers I mean: business/brands and/or their appointed advertising/marketing/media agencies) and media consumers (fans, audiences)). For example, sports sponsorships: companies are constantly looking for ways to get their name out there at any cost. (“Twitter? It beats a gold medal: Sponsorship firms are more interested in number of followers than victory” by Daily mail reporter). How does that affect evolving fan practices or even athletes?

-        Examining the content across the different media platforms that is produced by athletes themselves, audiences and sports media. For example, athletes’ self-branding can be effective without any sponsor’s help. Social media can empower them to be the media, hence they can communicate directly with the end market/consumers. Through the case studies we will see that it is much more complicated than that.

-        Investigating the ethics around sports as a business sector (looking into ambush marketing, culture jamming) and how the social media now is a key vehicle for it. For example, Subway is not an official sponsor (it has not paid the crazy amount of money to be the one!), but it still manages to get its name out there by calling itself ‘an official training restaurant’. How did that happen? What are the policing around it?