Sport and media: representing and conceptualising identity and community

As an introduction to the academic study of sport and the media, the chapter presents examples of different approaches to the analysis of the sport–media relationship within a broadly defined discipline of cultural history. It looks at key historical periods and their dominant media form in order to give an overview of the evolution – and yet the continuity – of the media in its relation to sport. It presents various ways in which historians have used the press, radio or television as sources for the cultural analysis of key topics: the body, identity of place, celebrity. It aims to give, in passing, a sense of some of the recent debates in the field