- History of the sports media
- Sociology of the media and journalism
- Gender studies in the sports media
- History of the sporting body
- Sports events and media innovations
Over the last few years, the interactions between sport and the media have provided fertile ground for researchers from many different backgrounds. In addition to helping promote and popularize sport and sporting competitions around the word, the media, realizing the impact of sport on mass audiences, quickly began investing heavily in sport, while “inventing” for these competitions new formats, new professions and new perspectives on time (e.g., through action replays, slow motion, etc.).
Going beyond simple analyses of representations, the interaction between sport and the media can also be analyzed via transformations in the way the “sporting spectacle” is produced – due to new methods such as video assistant referees – and its effects on how these new spectacles are received by spectator-consumers, who form an ever more varied audience, largely thanks to development of new media.
In order to achieve this, UNIL has created a network of specialists from various disciplines, including media experts, sports historians and sociologists, and with interests that go far beyond the sphere of competitive sport. Hence, women’s sport and gender, working-class sport, school sport and adaptive sport also provide fertile ground for combining different perspectives and developing new approaches.
Researchers working on this theme:
Institute of Sports Sciences
- Anne Marcellini – Associate professor
- Fabien Ohl - Full professor
- Lucie Schoch – Assistant teacher
Institute of Social Sciences
- Gianni Haver - Associate professor
Faculty of Arts
- Philippe Kaenel - Assistant professor
- François Vallotton - Full professor
Major publications on this research theme:
- Schoch, L. (2022). The gender of sports news: Horizontal segregation and marginalization of female journalists in the Swiss press. Communication & Sport, 10(4), 746-766.
- Schoch, L., & Ohl, F. (2021). How can they like doing that?. The Ambivalent Definition of Legitimate Work in Sports Journalism. Journalism Studies, 22(3), 263-281.
