Is the Internet a relational media successfully meeting the requirements of sport information

International audienceThe development of new sports information and communication techniques on the Internet has to be analyzed as part of a wider phenomenon, whose aim is the remote management of the public—users and consumers— and the creation of a sustainable link with them. In such a context, information becomes a strategic product whose value lies in the frame of exchanges it contributes to create and in their regularity. <br /><br />So far, the main agents in the field of information production and broadcasting —whose influence on sporting practices is undeniable— had been the traditional media and sports federations. Now, with the development of the internet, new sources of information—as legitimate as the previous ones—have appeared. They value internet-users' experiences. Federations and the media are thus being challenged by agents which, taking advantage of the « new economy », have created new information and communication tools, more particularly websites collecting information from several different sources and experience-sharing websites. <br /><br />Such websites offer a series of services and topical sections whose contents are individually developed by each site on the basis of other contributions and contents, each corresponding to varied services. Some specialized media, making the most –sometimes in an exaggerated way—of the changes in sporting practices, lay the emphasis on the new diversity of such practices. By contrast, experience-sharing websites, owned by firms and associations, prefer to support individual contributions by using devices based on methods and tools facilitating relationships and expression. <br /><br />Their overall efficiency resides in the alliance, on the one hand, of communication interactivity with a reader to whom is offered the possibility of producing information, and on the other hand, in the promise of individualized services, the most immediate of which remains access to information. <br /><br />This paper aims at pondering on the development of communication and information tools on the Internet, in the field of sports, considering this phenomenon in the wider context of the growth of remote means of relationships with the public. <br />The central aim of this paper is not to describe any sports contest nor to depict the treatment of sports by the media : our objective is, first, to identify the main information and communication devices on the Internet and, second, to analyse the different types of relationships established with the public by these new communication means.<br />The development of new sport information and communication techniques on the Internet has to be analyzed as part of a wider phenomenon, whose aim is the remote management of the public—users and consumers— and the creation of a sustainable link with them. In such a context, information becomes a strategic product whose value lies in the frame of exchanges it contributes to create and in their regularity. <br /><br />So far, the main agents in the field of information production and broadcasting —whose influence on sporting practices is undeniable— had been the traditional media and sports federations. Now, with the development of the internet, new sources of information—as legitimate as the previous ones—have appeared. They value internet-users' experiences. Federations and the media are thus being challenged by agents which, taking advantage of the « new economy », have created new information and communication tools, more particularly websites collecting information from several different sources and experience-sharing websites. <br /><br />Such websites offer a series of services and topical sections whose contents are individually developed by each site on the basis of other contributions and contents, each corresponding to varied services. Some specialized media, making the most –sometimes in an exaggerated way—of the changes in sporting practices, lay the emphasis on the new diversity of such practices. By contrast, experience-sharing websites, owned by firms and associations, prefer to support individual contributions by using devices based on methods and tools facilitating relationships and expression. <br /><br />Their overall efficiency resides in the alliance, on the one hand, of communication interactivity with a reader to whom is offered the possibility of producing information, and on the other hand, in the promise of individualized services, the most immediate of which remains access to information. <br />This paper aims at pondering on the development of communication and information tools on the Internet, in the field of sports, considering this phenomenon in the wider context of the growth of remote means of relationships with the public.<br />The central aim of this article is not to describe any sports contest nor to depict the treatment of sports by the media : our objective is first to identify the main information and communication devices on the Internet, and, second, to analyse the different types of relationships established with the public by these new communication means