Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2014

Drawing from the public confessions of performance-enhancing drug (PED) use by high-profile riders and interviews with current North American-based professional cyclists, we examine the role that confessional accounts play in anti-doping regulation and governance of the sport of cycling. Our research examines the ways in which the confessional accounts make sense of cycling’s PED use and then become the raw material that the current generation of professionals use to both explain the past and inform their own thinking on PED use. We argue that these accounts are key to the emerging narrative of clean cycling, a narrative that legitimates and bolsters the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) strategies, rationalities and cultures that are distinctive to sport governance.

This article explores how the issue of anabolic steroids has been covered by the Spanish press in a period when doping/drug abuse in sport has attracted considerable attention in the media. We analysed news and opinion pieces about this topic in the Spanish written press over a period of five years (2007–2011) on the basis of the agenda-setting theory. A total of 581 items linked to the consumption of steroids were identified, mainly in the sports sections of a statewide newspaper and in the society and crime sections of Valencian and Catalan regional newspapers. In the vast majority of cases, the source and producer of the news is the police or the judicial system and the primary focus is on penal aspects, while a health and social integration perspective is neglected. Press releases from the police reveal the spread of the doping phenomenon, among both professional and amateur athletes, and also among security and emergency bodies.

The use of performance-enhancing drugs, or doping, is an issue that goes a long way back in the history of sport, and its debate is of paramount importance in sports journalism, especially in cycling journalism. This article aims to analyse the way in which Italian sports journalists deal with the problems raised by the issue of doping in their work. Presented here are the results of a qualitative research study on two daily newspapers (the Corriere della Sera and la Repubblica) concerning their coverage of Lance Armstrong, probably the most controversial cyclist of the last twenty years, because of his talent, success and involvement in doping. The research shows that the issue of doping illustrates perfectly the need for a balance between strict and rigorous reporting of events, and the passionate dimension of sports reporting, which is one of the main challenges that sports journalists face every day.

The omnipresence of sport in the media and some of the characteristics associated with its presentation (constant presence, banality, emotional attachments … ) make it a prominent tool for the construction and reproduction of nationalism. In Catalonia, a territory in which two national identities coexist (Catalan and Spanish), sport plays a dominant role in the transmission of nationalizing messages. The present article analyses how the general press in Catalonia reproduce the nation through its treatment of sports information. We analyse the press coverage of sporting events in the period before the emergence of the recent pro-independence movement (2007–2009). The results reveal the presence of messages informed by the two nationalist persuasions (Catalan and Spanish), although with a clear prevalence of the latter in four of the six newspapers analysed.

Concern over the corrupting effects of modern sport has been voiced since its birth in the nineteenth century. Its critics have deemed it unhealthy, called it fascist, claimed that it created false conscience, etc. Its advocates, on the other hand, have praised sport’s ability to build character and facilitate understanding and respect between people and nations. But the sport advocates have not been univocal in their appraisal. They have expressed concern that the sporting values have come under threat from professionalization and increased commercialization of sport. In this article, however, we make the case that modern-day sport has qualities that help ground us in the world and, in fact, civilizes. The article starts by exposing the outdatedness of the sociologist John J. MacAloon’s ‘festival nostalgia’. It goes on to take issue with Guy Debord’s criticism of the disempowerment of the people caused by what he calls the ‘society of the spectacle’. Using soccer as the prime example, this is followed by a discussion of the fundamental elements of the fascination exerted by sport and of sport’s significance as modern mythology. We argue that the media-driven commercialization, often looked upon as the root cause of sport’s unfortunate development, is, in fact, part of the engine that propels it forward as a project for the development of popular culture.

The year 2014 marks an important time for Scotland when a referendum takes place to decide on whether it should be an independent country. This is the year of Homecoming (a year-long series of events designed to attract international tourists), and the nation also hosts two of the biggest sporting events in the world (the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup). Two years ago a number of Scottish athletes formed a part of Team GB as something of a media vortex engulfed a ‘home’ Olympic Games and promoted a popular celebration of Britishness. The Scottish tennis player Andy Murray was a central figure in that summer of sport and became a contested site for the (re)claiming of a national hero. This then clearly offers a timely moment to reflect upon the complex interplay between Scottish and British identities. In this short article I attempt to unwrap some of the key issues around crisis and conflict within elite sport within a particular locale, and try to tease out some of the ways in which these mediated identities reshape our understanding of the nations.

Sport is a huge global enterprise worth nearly $150 billion annually. As a result international federations and other stakeholders are keen to maintain the veneer of integrity and morality in an idealized vision of sport. The value of sport and what it means to the operation of global sports federations and associated enterprises, most notably the International Olympic Committee (IOC); The International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA); and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), is discussed. In this short viewpoint article I analyse the political economy underpinning the ‘war’ on athletes being waged at present in the name of ‘pure sport’. I argue that ‘pure sport’ and ‘level playing field’ are ideologies used to maintain the power position of major international sporting federations rather than an actual goal of these federations.