Michael L. Butterworth

Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field examines a wide array of topics necessary for students to understand sports media, rhetoric, culture, and organizations from micro to macro-level issues. Everything from youth to amateur to professional sports is addressed through varied useful lens such as mythology, community, and identity. Communication and Sport introduces readers to the traditions and vocabulary found in communication scholarship as it then explains what distinguishes communication from related disciplinary approaches, such as sociology, anthropology, history, and cultural studies. Subsequent chapters explore such issues as: fan cultures; racial identity and gender in sports media; politics and nationality in sports; parent/child relationships and player/coach interactions in sports; sports and religion; and crisis communication in sports organization. In response to changes in the sporting landscape, the Fifth Edition features an extensive structural change and reorganization with newly designed units and chapters in addition to introducing a new coauthor Nicky Lewis.

Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field provides students with an understanding of sports media, rhetoric, culture, and organizations through an examination of a wide range of topics. Authors Andrew C. Billings and Michael L. Butterworth address everything from youth to amateur to professional sports through varied lenses, including mythology, community, and identity. A comprehensive focus on communication scholarship gives attention to the ways that sports produce, maintain, or resist cultural attitudes about race, gender, sexuality, class, and politics. The Fourth Edition includes new interviews with prominent figures in the field and new discussions on current events like the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.