Page 20 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Introduction: Interacting with Media Sport • 9

to interpellate their prospective readers, and the close analysis of magazine covers
shows how images, layout, typeface and sell lines combine to hail readers to step into
the subject positions offered. By choosing which sport magazines to consume, the
identities of readers are shown to be constructed in interaction with the sport media.
The two case studies for this chapter focus on the address of two specialist sport
magazines, the British-based magazine Climber, and Crush, an offi cial publication
of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
Chapter 6 explores ways of making sense of sport-related advertising. Sport ad-
vertisements sell us something more than the product advertised—they sell us our-
selves by creating a structure in which we and the consumer goods associated with
sport become interchangeable. The chapter demonstrates how the power of sport
advertisement lies in the gaps between what is shown and the meanings the audi-
ence supplies to complete the picture. The importance of difference for advertisers to
sell their product is explored in relation to the way audiences seek social distinction
through their consumption of advertising imagery. Advertisements are often created

specifically to tie into major televised sport spectacles. The case studies for the chap-
ter consider two examples of this—US commercials created for the Super Bowl and
Peugeot advertisements broadcast in the United Kingdom during the 2007 Rugby
World Cup.
Meanings, discourses and mythologies constructed in the sport media and through
advertising campaigns are not simply layered on top of the real world, but rather are
built into the fabric of objects and spaces. Chapter 7 shows that the study of media

sport should not be confined to the two-dimensional imagery of films, television and

the print media, but rather needs to embrace three-dimensional objects and spaces to
fully comprehend the interaction between sport, media and society. Objects are re-

flections of the wider lives of communities and individuals, and many objects—cars,
balls, trainers, toys, replica football shirts, mobile phones—have been imprinted with
meaning through the sport media and advertising campaigns. This chapter discusses
approaches to the analysis of the interaction between sport, media and the wider
visual culture of which it is a part. It looks at the way media sport informs and is
informed by developments in art and architecture. Sport museums are understood
as mediating meanings of sport, constructing perspectives on what is valuable and
interesting about sport through the display of artefacts. The work of Foucault and de
Certeau are applied to the analysis of space to explore the ways people navigate
through parks, leisure centres, gyms, museums, shops and stadia, interacting with
media sport and advertising as they go. The case studies for this chapter focus on the
interaction between media and sport in the space of the National Football Museum in
Preston, UK, and the Boston Red Sox baseball stadium, Fenway Park, in the United
States.
Chapter 8 focuses on branding and the Internet to explore the emergence of new
media sportscapes. The sports brand is understood as a new media object, capable
of organising the exchange of meaning between producers and consumers (Lury