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10 • Sport, Media and Society
2004). Interactivity is central to the new media experience of sport. Developments
in digital television, mobile phone technology and the Internet have expanded the
potential for consumers to tailor media sport to their own requirements. The chapter
draws attention to the ways that new technology might shift the power dynamics of
media sport. The chapter considers interactive sport media as requiring consumers to
navigate through virtual spaces, and thus builds on the previous chapters to present
an approach to analysing Internet sport sites. The case study explores the interaction
between sport advertising, sport spaces and the audio-visual culture of sport on the
global Web site http://www.adidas.com.
The concluding chapter focuses on a case study of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis
Championships to bring together the concepts, themes and approaches used in the
book to demonstrate the many levels of interaction between sport, media and society.
Wimbledon is analysed as both a space and a media representation, and the chapter
shows how the Wimbledon brand is embedded into the fabric of the buildings. The
chapter compares the televising of the space of Wimbledon in the United States and
the United Kingdom to show how the virtual space of Wimbledon is communicated
via the media. The chapter shows how this process shifts the ties of meaning to place,
offering the potential to disrupt the established hierarchies of class, gender and nation
at Wimbledon. The chapter ends by encouraging researchers and students to engage in
two- and three-dimensional analyses of sport, media and visual culture to produce their
own independent explorations of the interactions between sport, media and society.
Analysing Sport in the Media
Each chapter encourages readers to begin their own analysis. To model the steps
of analysis appropriate to each of the sport media forms covered by the book, each
chapter includes a section explaining the practical aspects of analysing one of the
chapter’s case studies. Researchers and students can follow the approach taken to
applying the concepts from the chapter to the investigation of, for example, Rag-
ing Bull, Fenway Park or http://www.adidas.com. In addition, Chapter 1, “Analysing
Media Sport’, contains a step-by-step guide to analysis that provides the foundations
for researching all forms of media sport. At the end of each chapter, the suggestions
for analysis present ideas for pursuing original investigations, and the guide to fur-
ther reading points to publications readers can use as a starting point to frame their
analyses.
Further Reading
Bourdieu, P. (1979), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Lon-
don: Routledge.
Brohm, J.-M. (1978), Sport: a Prison of Measured Time, London: Ink Links.