Page 169 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

158 • Sport, Media and Society

of ways, creating their own experiences and meanings within the sportscape of
Fenway Park.

Suggestions for Analysis

The experience of live sport is inevitably mediated in some form. Fans approach the
event with preexisting knowledge of the sport and its stars gained from consumption
of the sport media. Attendance at the event itself involves multiple encounters with
mediated sport, including newspapers, programmes, posters and advertisements,
logos on fans’ and players’ clothing, big-screen TVs and music played into the sta-
dium. Select a sport event and consider how the ‘live’ sport experience is mediated
through the spatial environment. How do aspects of the media impact the experience
of sport as you travel to the event? What audio-visual stimuli greet you? How is
music used to sonically brand the players and the event?
Sport museums can be said to mediate the meaning of sport by framing and de-
limiting visitors’ understanding of a sport’s past and present. In addition, the sport
media itself often makes up a large part of the museum displays. Newspaper cuttings,

events that received media attention and old television and film clips are common
features in sport museums. Visitors are encouraged to interact with exhibits through
multimedia displays. Select a sport museum and explore the effect of the technolo-
gies of display on constructing the visitor’s understanding of sport. How do the ar-
chitecture and the interior design invite the visitor to move through the museum?
How are objects labelled, organised and explained? How are visitors encouraged to

interact with exhibits? Consider whether museums focused on specific sports have a
tendency to construct the past, present and future of that sport in a particular way.

Further Reading

Bale, J. (1994), Landscapes of Modern Sport, Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Bennett, T. (1995), The Birth of the Museum, London: Routledge.
De Certeau, M. (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
Dicks, B. (2003), Culture on Display: the Production of Contemporary Visitability,
Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Pen-
guin.
McCarthy, A. (2001), Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space, Durham:
Duke University Press.
Mehretu, J. (2004), Stadia II & Stadia III, North Carolina Art Museum, <http://ncart
museum.org/exhibitions/citysitings/cs/Arts> accessed 4 April 2008. [painting]