Research roundup: Podcasters and disabled athletes

Catching up on research heading into the IACS Summit next week.

Next week is one of my favorite academic weeks of the year. 

The 2024 Summit on Communication and Sport, held by the International Association for Communication and Sport, is scheduled for next weekend in Los Angeles. Once again, I’m honored and proud to be attending and presenting. 

Simply put, it’s the best academic conference I go to. It’s where I met my people, a cohort of brilliant scholars who are just as obsessed with sports as I am. If you’ve ever listened to an episode of The Flip Side, that came directly from IACS and meeting Galen Clavio there. 

Next week, I’ll have an essay here based of my presentation at the conference (which is part of a larger potential book project that I’m working on). The week after, I’m planning to do a research roundup of the most interesting stuff I learn at the conference, as well as a bit of a travelog of my trip to LA with my family.¹ 

This week, to get us ready for conference week, a quick research roundup of some of the latest in sports media research: 

There are few things cooler in media research than a study that contradicts existing literature. 

Seriously, it’s really fun and interesting when you read one or when you write one. It’s adds so much more to the body of knowledge than another study that confirms what we think we already know. In the world of academic publishing, there is so much explicit and tacit conformity, that when there’s a break in that, it feels so refreshing. 

Matthew Taylor of Tennessee State University published a study in the Journal of radio and Audio Media about the motivations of independent sports podcasters — people who host a podcast about sports but who aren’t affiliated with legacy media or “do not benefit from significant corporate support.” In the abstract, he wrote that his study’s findings “contradict recent research suggesting that podcasters are becoming more focused on money and are therefore treating their creative efforts as a form of employment rather than leisure.”

I’m in. 

Taylor conducted in-depth interviews with 19 podcasts who create shows about the Baltimore Orioles, and found three major themes about their motivation and measures of success. 

Nonmonetary. This is the part that contradicts the existing podcasting literature, which suggests that the space is becoming more professional, more monetized, more focused on making money. “The sports podcasters interviewed for this study view their podcasts as a hobby, using that term along with phrases like “labor of love” and “passion project,” rather than harboring financial motives,” Taylor wrote.

Simplicity. One of the great things about podcasts, as any of us who have one or teach it knows, is that podcasts are easy to make and there’s a low barrier for entry into the space. That was a big part of what Taylor found. 

“The “Simplicity” subtheme that emerged in this analysis reveals a consideration that has not received significant attention in prior podcasting studies, namely the ease of creating and distributing content … Podcasting offers a simpler alternative to sports fans wishing to share their opinions with a wider audience.” 

Connection. With the audience, sure. But what Taylor found that was super interesting was that the podcasters also valued their connections with their cohosts.

“These multi-person efforts provided the hosts with recurring bonding opportunities as they recorded their shows. One longtime podcaster mentioned how he enjoyed being able to converse regularly with his best friend. Meanwhile, sibling podcasters who live in different states said their show provides them with a regularly scheduled time to connect.”

Media coverage of athletes with disabilities is not something I have a ton of expertise in. But that is the focus of the April edition of Communication & Sport, and there were two interesting articles that jumped out to me. 

The first is a study by Katherine Holland, Steven Holland and Justin Haegele that examined the Tweets of an unidentified Sports Media Company in the US represented disability. The researchers found that only 2 percent of the company’s total tweets in 2019 portrayed disabled athletes or individuals, and that two thirds of those tweets represented disabled individuals in spectator or non-athlete roles. The study also found that the Tweets generally conveyed a tone of wonder or inspiration, treating many of the individuals as exotic. 

The study: 

highlighted inequitable representation of disabled athletes and individuals by a major United States-based SMC. In particular, this study provided significant insight into the various ways disabled individuals and athletes were represented, in part by revealing that only 43 of the 126 tweets (34.1%) represented disabled individuals as sport participants while approximately two-thirds of representation relegated disabled individuals to spectator or other nonathlete roles, thus reinforcing stigma and bias against disabled individuals as incapable of becoming sporting individuals

The second interesting study, conducted by French researchers Yann Beldame, Helene Joncheray, Valentine Duquesne and Rémi Richard, examined the relationship between Paraylmpic athletes and their sponsors. Through a series of survey interviews, the team found that sponsorships for Paralympic athletes are often given out based on how inspiring they are perceived to be. The system, therefore, tends to:

exclude and invisibilize Paralympic athletes who are the least inspiring for non-disabled people. Therefore, it appears that there are inequalities between Paralympic athletes in their access to sponsors according to the inspiration they arouse in non-disabled people.

Are you a professor or researcher in this space who had a published study you’d like to share? That’s how I found out about Matthew Taylor’s podcasting study. Shoot me an email and let me know about it! 

1.  It’s a tribute to the recently retired Peter King’s old MMQB columns. Also, I kind of wish that I did when we attended IACS last year in Barcelona. As a general rule as I get older, I’m trying to take more photos and write down more stuff. Not always to publish, but just to remember and so maybe my kid has something to look back on.