I have been quite busy over the past weeks, causing me to delay posting on the website. Hopefully, these engagements will result in new knowledge and publications in the months to come. In my previous post, however, I promised to comment on the Summit on Communication and Sport held between 29-31 March in East Peoria, Illinois.
The first adjective that comes to mind when thinking back to the event hosted by Bradley University is ‘welcoming’. I caught up with two acquaintances before the start of the opening reception, was introduced to fifteen more participants at dinner, and agreed to take part in the Summit Fantasy Baseball League before paying my tab. During the entire event, people seemed genuinely interested in meeting fellow researchers and finding out what goes on in other parts of the planet.
The conference was extremely informative. I attended presentations on topics that Slovenian as well as many European scholars seem to consider irrelevant, such as issues surrounding Twitter as a source of information for the media and the billion dollar industry that are fantasy sports. I was particularly impressed with Adam Earnheardt’s talk on sports journalists as sports fans (in general, younger journalists seem to believe fandom is an admissible part of their profession while older journalists frown that), while Keith Strudler from the Center for Sport Communication at Marist College discussed the impact of social media on speed and sourcing in sports newsrooms.
The paper on the representation of nationality and gender in Slovenian 2008 Summer Olympic television coverage I co-authored with Andy Billings was part of a Saturday morning session on Olympic Broadcasting. I spoke about broadcasters’ cheerleading, which is wrongfully considered pervasive by Slovenian announcers, and about chauvinistic discourse in terms of gender and nationality. Other speakers included Tie Nie (with Nicholas Watanabe) from the University of Missouri with a paper on the evolution of television broadcast commentary in China, and Lauren Smith from Auburn University who conducted a gender-focused analysis of the visual production of the 2010 Olympic ice hockey tournaments. The crowd in attendance was relatively small—apparently many had left on the day before—but it hopefully enjoyed some insightful presentations on the influence of Olympic broadcasting worldwide.
The pool of invited speakers and panelists included several names from the American broadcasting and communication industry. Names such as Charley Steiner, the Los Angeles Kings radio play-by-play broadcaster, and Molly Knight, a sportswriter for ESPN The Magazine, were a magnet for US participants but only little appealing to international members such as myself. While these prominent sports media people are good storytellers, they focus on entertaining US crowds rather than offering insight to global audiences. Still, most people enjoyed their talks and I picked up tidbits of interesting information myself.
Unfortunately, I did not meet Robert Krizek from Saint Louis University who could not attend the event. Krizek was one of the speakers at the first Summit in 2002 and was then the editor of a special issue of the Western Journal of Communication—the first time a disciplinary journal devoted an entire issue to communication and sport research. Krizek and I share mutual interest in culture and communication, and sport and communication; hopefully, we will have a chance to meet at next year’s Summit in Texas.
One of the pillars of the conference’s social program was the draft of the fantasy baseball league. As I last followed baseball ‘when Albert Belle was a good slugger’, I did not originally intend to take part in the competition and joined only because an even number of participants was needed (and to expand my cultural horizons). As I am completely oblivious as to who is hot and who is not in the MLB at the moment (or has been over the past ten years) I chose the only drafting strategy I could consistently follow: hence, my team, The Internationals, is composed of non-US players only. Due to the absurd team composition—while other players were shifting through insider’s websites and statistical archives, I was checking on Wikipedia to confirm that Randall Delgado was born outside the USA—my goal for the season was achieving a single victory in the 19 games/weeks of regular season. I reached the goal in Week 4, winning against a team set up by a professional fantasy sports scholar, and extended my winning streak to two games after Week 5.
A thing I noticed while in East Peoria was the extent to which people used Twitter. Even academics would share thoughts and quotes in mid-lectures through their mobile phones. I might be old-fashioned or even considered to come from a developing country but I cannot help considering using a mobile phone during someone’s speech impolite. Despite this, I succumbed to peer pressure and finally joined Twitter myself. My one-liners can be followed through @drSimonLicen (an alias consisting of my first and last name only was already taken, hence the ‘dr’ in front). I am still very wary of making statements ‘in 140 characters or less’—my arguments are more likely to require 140 words or more—but I can certainly appreciate it as a new media form as well as a source of ideas for future research. Feel free to follow me there.
Attending the Summit and the overall US experience was great fun. A few weeks after lecturing at the University Alabama I had the opportunity to talk about sports journalism and sports reporting to University of Ljubljana journalism students. I shall post a report with the key points I made in the lecture within a week. Until then, keep on supporting The Internationals in the International Association for Communication and Sport Fantasy Baseball league. If I had to choose a war cry for the team, I guess it might be: ‘Dajmo, naši!’