| Most academic research of sports and media has focused on "big time" spectator sports, either the coverage of professional, national or of revenue-generating collegiate sports, or the research has focused on media's stereotypical shortcomings of sports coverage. Additionally, most content and framing/theme analyses of sports media texts seek a specific goal. While large media organizations drive the majority of "big time" sports coverage, and, consequently, the academic research, high school sports are the lifeblood of smaller media and make for an important area of study due to such media's abilities to reach into communities, both informing and driving dialogue. A combination of a content analysis and a framing/theme analysis helps to illuminate an area of academic research that has not gained much attention. These analyses address various theoretical aspects of mass media, its ties to communities and cultures, and its role as a media/mediator between the event and the audience. The analyses also address one specific media outlet and how its approaches to covering high school sports have changed over time in the way those stories are both framed and constructed. These analyses also consider that the concept of community, and in part the enjoyment of the event, may be changing with the further growth of the Internet and also considers the impact of the Internet and fragmented audiences on the changing format of sports stories. |
