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Interaction between Sports Media and Fans

William Dunlop

University of Central Florida

ENC 1102

Professor Mooney

February 25, 2020

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Within every discourse community is their own unique genre. (Johns 1997)

describes… how discourse communities own a specific genre, while also acquiring a specific

lexis. This can be very important when reading articles, more specifically sports. In order to be

able to understand a sports article the reader must have a background knowledge of the sport.

(Downs 2019) describes how the reader and writer interact to create meaning. Sports media rely

on both genre and rhetoric to create the overall main point of exigence. In this essay I will be

analyzing how sports media can be interactive, negative, and a reflection of society.

Writers and fans often interact to make meaning. This can be seen everywhere within the

sports media world. (Johns 1997) describes how rhetoric is “pervasive”. Sports rhetoric is

especially growing in social media where fans can comment on a post from a sports page almost

instantly. (Fortuna 2015) describes it perfectly, kids who have “FOMO” (fear of missing out)

will “tweet about their favorite athletes between classes, text their BFF (best friend forever)

about today’s starting line-up, read the sports section of their school’s daily online newspaper….”

An example of fans and sports writers interact can be seen through fantasy baseball. (Burr-Miller

2011) describes throughout his article how fantasy baseball has brought fans more engaged in

baseball than ever before. Fans create their own team from players they drafted at the beginning

of the year. Fantasy baseball requires fans to be informed on the latest news so they can make

sure they have the correct players in their lineups. Sports media today is extremely interactive

and is constantly exchanging rhetoric between writers and fans.

There are also a lot of negative aspects of media. Media can target players which often

persuade fans to dislike them. An example of this is Carlos Zambrano. (Johnson et al. 2013)

describes how Zambrano had the reputation of arguing with teammates and throwing tantrums.

The media saw this as a chance to use him as a story every time he would erupt with anger. The
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fans saw these articles on Zambrano and it eventually got to the point where both fans and

writers called for Zambrano to seek anger management. Even after anger management the media

was watching his every move to see his progress, until he eventually threw another tantrum.

“Zambrano was the same immature hothead he swore he wouldn’t be again,” (Johnson et al.

2013). Zambrano. Is a perfect example of how the media can use rhetoric in a persuasive way for

how they want the fans to react. Another example is the treatment of Barry Bonds. (Ventresca

2011) describes how when he was chasing Hank Aarons homerun record. The media had an

image about how they pictured Barry Bonds due to conflicts with media in the past, and

accusations of steroid use. These prepositions reflected in their writing with little excitement.

The writers in the various articles did not want to give bonds any credit for such an

accomplishment. (Koppet 2000) also describes how media. Does not like teams relocating solely

because sporting events help sell newspapers.

Sports media also reflects society. (Fortuna 2015) talks about this throughout her article

“Sports media hold tremendous power to mold people’s outlooks, actions, and beliefs.” Sports is

a mini reflection of our society and the media has all the power to present it to us in their

coverage. (Menevşe et al. 2019) describes how magazines, and tabloids rarely covered female

athletes. There are multiple other examples of sports media being a reflection of society, but I

really like the example of representation of women in sports because it is relevant to society

today.

The point of this research paper is not to analyze whether sports media is good or bad. It

is to analyze the rhetoric within the community and how it is presented. There is an abundance of

ways sports media can be given to the fans. Some good, some bad. It is up to us to interpret the

rhetoric and formulate our own perspective.

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Burr-Miller, A. C. (2011). What’s your fantasy? fantasy baseball as equipment for living.

Southern Communication Journal, 76(5), 443–464. doi: 10.1080/10417941003725299.

The main idea of this article is to examine how fantasy baseball has completely shifted

the focus of baseball from a troubled past. Fantasy baseball creates a new context where

fans are engaged daily with the latest news in the baseball world. The essay utilizes an

autoethnographic methodology. Burr- Miller is constantly connecting personal

experiences with cultural throughout the essay to explain his argument. The results show

that fantasy baseball opens up a new platform for media to explore. Fantasy baseball has

motivated the media to change their focus on actual performance on the field rather than

off the field issues.

This article is helpful in the sense that it demonstrates one of my three themes:

how sports media can be interactive. Fantasy baseball gives fans the incentive to read up

on players and stats. The rhetoric from the media needs to be informative to allows fans

to investigate which player they may want on their team. Before fantasy baseball, media

was focused on off the field issues such as steroid use. Now it gives fans the chance to

“talk baseball” again. Examples of this new media may offer advice on if you should start

or bench a player, or if a player should be traded.

Downs, D. (2019). Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning- Making.

Writing

About Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford, St. Martins. The main idea of this article is to

explain the meaning of rhetoric, how it is a part of our everyday lives, and explaining

rhetorical situation. Downs walks readers through rhetorical situations using the same
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example of grant-writers for nonprofit organizations. Rhetoric is everywhere. Its

principles help us interact and make decisions.

This article by Downs helps provide the framework I need for my essay,

alongside another article from the textbook by (Johns 1997). Johns describes how each

discourse community has its own type of rhetoric whereas Downs dives deep into the

specifics of rhetoric. Downs will be extremely useful when talking about the interaction

between sports media and fans. The writers provide the story on what they are covering,

and the fans interpret it however they want. Downs describes rhetoric as simply “being

human”, every time we communicate, we are using rhetoric even in social media. Downs

will be especially useful when I am explaining my primary research on the different

social media platforms. I can describe the main motivation, exigence and how they

appealed to audience in each post, and I can explain the interaction between the account

that posted and how the fans react in the comment section.

Fortuna, C. (2015). Digital Media Literacy in a Sports, Popular Culture and Literature Course.

Journal of Media Literacy Education, 6(3), 81–89. The main idea of this article is to

study a course offered at a high school for seniors where they analyze sports

media/literature and apply it to real life circumstances. In the article the goals of each unit

are outlined to show the students learning progression, as well as the overall outcome of

the course. By the end of the class students would have a better understanding of

multimodal text-analysis and composition because their investigation into sports media.

This article offers deep insight into the sports industry, and how it could be used

to solve issues in society. I really like this piece because it shows how sports have

become so interactive and I can relate it to (Burr-Miller 2011) about how sports media
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has become more interactive. This also relates to (Downs 2019) because sports media,

whether it’s an alert on the phone or an article on the web, are interacting with the fans to

make meaning. The world of sports is a huge discourse community that can be divided

into smaller communities. Sports media is a perfect example of that concept. This is vital

to my research question because this article. demonstrates how sports media is

everywhere from tv commercials, to magazines, to alerts on the phone.

Johns, Ann M. (1997). Discourse communities and communication of practice: membership,

conflict and diversity. In D. Downs & E. Wardle, Writing About Writing (pp. 319-340).

Boston, NY: Bedford/St. Martins Macmillan Learning. Johns describes discourse

communities and problems that could occur within them. Johns explains different

communities such as professional, recreational, social, and political. Each community has

its own lexis and common goals. Communities even have their own cost of affiliation or

conflicts within. People can be a part of more than one community. Just because a person

is in a community does not mean they share everything in common. They share that one

particular idea in common with other people within the community.

Johns article will be my second framework used in the research paper. Johns is

useful in describing sports media as a discourse community. The sports media

community almost has to include the fans as members. Without fans media would be

producing content for nobody, and their writing would have no purpose. Johns will help

me dive into the specifics of this community such as, lexis, cost of affiliation, and

conflicts within the community. One of my themes in the research paper is how sports

media is a reflection of society. John’s section on professional communities will provide

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useful information on how sports media is a specialized community within a larger

discourse community.

Johnson, K. A., & Anderson, J. W. (2013). Rhetorical constructions of anger management,

emotions, and public argument in baseball culture: the case of Carlos Zambrano. NINE:

A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, 21(2), 56–76. doi: 10.1353/nin.2013.0004.

The main idea of this source is to summarize the efforts taken by the MLB and Carlos

Zambrano to manage his anger, and the reactions from fans and media. The research was

conducted through experts on anger management and counselling. There is no real

methodology with statistics. The end result of the article was calling fans and media to

almost “back off.” The media need to let players sort out there issues instead of calling

for action and Carlos Zambrano is a prime example of that.

This article will be useful for my research paper in several ways. The first is that

it is an example of how the reader and writer interact to make meaning. Fans and media

literally called for Zambrano to seek anger management counselling. This also can be

used like the article about Barry Bonds, to show a negative side of sports media. The

media that covered Zambrano were monitoring his every breathe. They were trying to

capture every outburst and turn it into a story. The writers did a great job of incorporating

and analyzing the rhetoric of quotes from different articles following Zambrano. This

serves as an excellent source for my research question: How do sports media address

certain news/alerts and what effect does it have on the fans? It is a perfect example of my

entire research question. I could take any section of this article. and it could be used in

some way to explain my research question.

Koppet, L. (2000). The globalization of baseball: reflections of a sportswriter. Indiana Journal

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of Global Legal Studies, 8(1), 81-84. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20644758. The main

idea of this article is to talk about why any MLB franchises will not expand to other

countries such as Latin America or Europe. There is no methodology explained during

this article. Koppet gives multiple different reasons such as media concerns, the league

would become too big, and scheduling problems. The results of this article are that

professional baseball cannot expand to different countries anytime soon.

This research article does not address media as its main point but does offer value

for my research paper. One of the main reasons’ baseball cannot expand overseas is the

media. Koppet describes how when teams such as the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to

relocate, the media was extremely hesitant. “The New York Times fought very hard to

keep the Brooklyn Dodgers,” (Koppet 2000). The reason is sporting events help sell

newspapers. Publishing companies such as the New York Times can write a recap of a

game and sell it the next day. They were arguing purely to exploit the team for profit.

Although I am only using a portion of this article for my research paper, it provides

valuable information about sports media. I can pair this with Ventresca and Johnson et al,

to describe the use of rhetoric in a negative way to earn profit.

Menevşe, A., & Ablay, M. E. (2019). An investigation of the attitudes of sports media towards

Women’s sports. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 7(1), 87–94. doi:

10.13189/ujer.2019.070112. The main purpose of this article is to analyze how sports

media present women’s sports. The methodology is a survey of 161 people from various

newspaper companies and sports sites. They were asked sixteen questions. Results

showed that there was little coverage on female sporting events. The reasoning for this
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was because editors failed to research about peoples’ interests while others assumed that

women’s sports potential was lower than males.

This article is important when explaining my theme “sports media is a reflection

of our society.” While this article may be a little off topic in terms of not talking about

baseball it serves as great research for the theme. While explaining this theme I will also

incorporate more of (Fortuna 2015) article to bring in some baseball background

information relative to the topic. Before the annotated bibliography I was having a hard

time coming up with a third and final theme, after adding two more sources I decided this

would be a great topic to explore because I felt that it is very relevant to today. (Johns

1997) will be very helpful for this theme when exploring sports media as being a part of a

bigger discourse community.

Ventresca, M. (2011). There's something about barry: media representations of a home run king.

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, 20(1), 56–80. doi:

10.1353/nin.2011.0037. The main idea of this source is to analyze the media’s

representation of Barry Bonds when he was chasing Hank Aarons homerun record.

Ventresca questioned why one of the most historic record chasing moments had little, to

no media coverage. The research was gathered by examining three articles on the subject

back in 2007. The articles were from New York Times, USA Today, and the San

Francisco Chronicle. The results were that Bonds representation from the media was

extremely inconsistent. Bonds’ achievements were overshadowed by things such as

tensions with the media, and the accusation of steroid use.

This article emphasizes how the media can often use bias. The media had an

image about how they pictured Barry Bonds and it reflected in there writing. The writers
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in the various articles did not want to give bonds any credit. I really like this article

because of the methodology for the research. Ventresca analyzed the rhetoric of three

different articles. He found that the articles were taking a negative perspective on the

topic, and he analyzed why they were taking that point of view. My primary research

method is multimodal text- analysis so this was a very good example for what I am

looking for when I analyze different social media platforms. Overall this source provides

a great foundation for me to base my research off of, and it will be used to further

empathize the theme of how the media address news and alerts. This source is similar to

the next source I am going to describe about Carlos Zambrano. They both analyze a

professional baseball player, and the representation the media gave them.
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