Sports Crisis Communication

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Background

The exponential growth of sports communication research has awakened a sub-discipline of sports crisis communication research to shape knowledge and practice of crisis communication to plan, mitigate, respond, and recover from risks and crisis as they relate to athletes, sports organizations, and stakeholders including fans. This Research Topic is designed to further develop the sports crisis communication sub-field and internationalize its scholarship.

Sports organizations play an influential role in shaping cultural and communicative practices. Much like any large organization, however, they are not immune to experiencing crises. Communication with stakeholders amidst crisis is a vital factor for sports organizations when trying to retain their networks of sponsors, fans, and financial supporters. Recent technological mediums multiply the way in which sports organizations can start and retain these conversations. Social media, for example, allows organizations to communicate with various stakeholders, but also increases the ability for stakeholders to convene, debate, and interact with each other as they attempt to understand the crisis at hand. This discourse offers new opportunities to investigate how sports organizations attempt to mediate crisis to fans and/or stakeholders, but also how fans communicate within these respective networks.

Athletes and sports organizations experience reputational crises from a myriad of accusations of wrongdoing in their personal and professional endeavors, terrorism, natural disasters, and anti-social fan behavior. The list of sport crises is long and wide, which spurs a dearth of scholarship at the intersection of communication, crisis, and sports. The literature on sport crisis communication, while limited, examines the varied responses of sports organizations, athletes, media, and fans to crisis. Positioned as a subfield intersecting with “communication, mass communication, public relations, sport communication, and crisis communication,” sport crisis communication examines anticipatory (crisis planning, risk communication) and reactionary (image repair, policy changes) approaches to crisis.

Much scholarly attention is paid to how sports organizations or members of said institutions attempt to mitigate crisis and repair image when possible. However, less work focuses on the communication practices enacted by fans or stakeholders of these sports organizations or athletes. Tracking and analyzing these communicative interactions can reveal a more comprehensive understanding of how fans or aficionados come to interpret and understand crises of their respective sports affiliation through online dialogue. Therefore, examining how stakeholders maintain, reject, or alter relationships with sports organizations in crisis will offer new opportunities for sports crisis communication scholars.

The purpose of this Research Topic is to investigate the relationship between fans and sports organizations (or athletes) who are navigating a crisis. This article collection will offer insight for scholars interested in how sports organizations maintain stakeholder relationships, especially with fans and patrons, when experiencing crises like athlete/organizational wrongdoing, pandemics, controversial sociopolitical stances, fan violence, and more.

Topics may include an overlapping interest in sports crisis communication, but we have provided a partial list for research development:

• use of social media by sports fans to engage with crisis communication and their teams
• framing of sports crisis through social media
• fans use of humor (e.g. memes, satire, sarcasm) in managing image threats to their favorite teams
• sports fans and organizations (dis)identification strategies when negotiating crises
• comparative case studies of sports crisis communication
• communication ethics and the role of globalization of sports organizations in crises
• media ubiquity and how athletes, sports organizations, and stakeholder communication is evolving, affecting sports crisis communication
• social media applications and their unique characteristics shaping sports crisis communication
• critical analysis of sports crisis communication in the digital era
• virality and sports crisis communication
• new ground in image and reputation management
• sports crisis communication and renewal through social media
• sports organizations and their rules, resources, cultures, policies, etc... affecting crisis planning, risk mitigation, crisis response, and post-crisis renewal
• sports crisis communication leadership
• conflict escalation, flaming, trolling, and social media during sports crisis
• sports organizational networks and crises.

This Research Topic encourages submissions grounded in the communication studies discipline on several topics including, but not limited to, social media’s role in interpreting sport organization crises, sports fandom and/or identification, and cultural practices of communicating allegiance to sports organizations. We encourage international scholars to submit essays that reflect their respective, unique intercultural experiences. The reference list for this call provides a grounding in the study of sport crisis communication, and we encourage contributors to consider these sources. Our goal is to offer an international perspective on how sport organizations and fans contribute to the established understandings of sports crisis communication.

References

Battenfield, F.L. (2015) ‘The Culture of Communication in Athletics’. In Pedersen, P.M. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Sport Communication, pp. 441-450. Routledge.

Benoit, W.L. and Hanczor, R.S. (1994) ‘The Tonya Harding Controversy: An Analysis of Image Restoration Strategies’, Communication Quarterly, 42, pp. 416–433.

Blaney, J.R., Lippert, L.R. and Smith, S.J., (eds.) (2013) Repairing the Athlete’s Image: Studies in Sports Image Restoration. Lexington Books.

Coombs, W.T. and Holladay, S.J. (2008) ‘Comparing Apology to Equivalent Crisis Response Strategies: Clarifying Apology’s Role and Value in Crisis Communication’, Public Relations Review, 34(3), pp. 252–257.

DiFiori, J.P., Green, G., Meeuwisse, W., Putukian, M., Solomon, G.S. and Sills, A. (2021) ‘Return to Sport for North American Professional Sport Leagues in the Context of COVID-19’, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 55, pp. 417–421.

Farhi, P. (2010) ‘Lost in the Woods’, American Journalism Review, 32(1), pp. 14–19.

Fortunato, J. (2008) ‘Restoring a Reputation: The Duke University Lacrosse Scandal’, Public Relations Review, 34, pp. 116–123.

Harker, J.L. and Saffer, A.J. (2018) ‘Mapping a Subfield’s Sociology of Science: A 25-Year Network and Bibliometric Analysis of the Knowledge Construction of Sports Crisis Communication’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 42(5), pp. 369–392.

Meng, J. and Pan, P. (2013) ‘Revisiting Image-Restoration Strategies: An Integrated Case Study of Three Athlete Sex Scandals in Sports News’, International Journal of Sport Communication, 6(1), pp. 87–100.

Newson, M. (2019) ‘Football, Fan Violence, and Identity Fusion’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 54(4), pp. 431–444.

Spaaij, R. (2016) ‘Terrorism and Security at the Olympics: Empirical Trends and Evolving Research Agendas’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 33(4), pp. 451–468.

Walsh, J. and McAllister-Spooner, S.M. (2011) ‘Analysis of the Image Repair Discourse in the Michael Phelps Controversy’, Public Relations Review, 37(2), pp. 157–162.

Welsh, T., Spradley, R.T., and Spradley, E. (2022) ‘Crisis communication in Sports Organizations in the Covid-19 Pandemic’. In Chen, S.S., Chen, Z.J., and Allaire, N. (eds.) Discordant Pandemic Narratives in the U.S., pp. 107-132. Lexington.

Wenner, L.A. (1989) ‘Media, Sports, and Society: The Research Agenda’. In Wenner, L.A. (ed.) Media, Sports, and Society, pp. 13-48. Sage.

Wicker, P., Filo, K. and Cuskelly, G. (2013) ‘Organizational Resilience of Community Sport Clubs Impacted by Natural Disasters’, Journal of Sport Management, 27(6), pp. 510–525.

Research Topic Research topic image

Keywords: sport communication, crisis communication, crisis leadership, image repair

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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