Sport Media and Culture, BA

The sport media and culture major examines the complex and dynamic relationship between sporting organizations and media companies, and how this relationship shapes the cultures of sports in the U.S. and beyond. Students take courses in the area of sport and media and the area of sport and culture in order to gain an understanding of how cultural meanings are shaped and contested through sport. At the end of the program, students will complete a capstone to direct this knowledge toward their own personal interests and career goals.

Coursework provides students with the critical skills necessary to understand sport media’s relationships to economics, politics, and education. A focus on race, class, gender, and sexuality in sports is central to the major.

Learning Outcomes

Graduates of the BA in sport media and culture learn how to study sports critically and understand their complex relationships with cultural meanings. This entails an understanding of:

  • contemporary U.S. sports' relationship with media and how this relationship intersects with other institutions and contexts including politics and the economy;
  • the diversity of sporting experiences in the U.S., including how opportunities for and the nature of participation are influenced by social class, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, age, and ability/disability; as well as how that diversity is represented in sport media;
  • the historical and cultural forces that shape the relationship between U.S. sport and media from the 19th century to the present;
  • U.S. sport media's relationship to global sport media and the historical, political, and social factors that impact it; and
  • the theories and research methods that allow students to forge their own well-informed and clearly communicated critical studies of sport media.