Revolution of the Modern Sports Fan explores the elements of the sports fan that have markedly changed in the past few years. Inherent within these investigations is the role of communication in a multitude of forms (mediated, relational, etc.) as the prototypical sports fan has most heavily shifted within this domain. From the advent of social media to the rise of fantasy sport to the increased media platforms in which to consume sport, the sports fan has never had more options for consumption-and for the rendering of one's opinions. As such, Revolution of the Modern Sports Fan offers an opportunity to advance what we now know about American sports fandom as well as the ability to debunk what scholars thought they knew about sports fandom that has now shifted.

At its core, consumer insights research is fun. Fast-paced, creative, and exciting, working in this field means constant interaction and engagement with people, concepts, and ideas. Consumer insights researchers get to spend their days partnering with clients to solve complex and knotty problems across all mass communication industries, including film, television, digital, advertising, and public relations. They do deep dives to understand the perceptions and perspectives of target audiences using a wide range of approaches and methods. On every project, hours are spent playing with data and ideas, coming up with creative and innovative ways to approach problems and uncover the insights that will lead to effective audience engagement. This work is dynamic and intellectually challenging, celebrating innovative approaches that lead to unique explanations of-and solutions for-important problems. It also is essential to success: Whether you are working on a media product or a strategic communication campaign, successfully reaching your audience and meeting your objectives requires good research. Unfortunately, this is not what our undergraduate students currently experience when using the existing crop of research methods textbooks. Even though journalism, media, applied communication, advertising, and public relations programs typically offer-and often require-at least a foundational research methods course, most undergraduate students do not leave those courses with an accurate understanding of what this field actually entails. Typically written with an emphasis on academic research, those books often are intended for those who plan to follow a very specific path-conduct scholarly research, primarily using quantitative methods. The scientific method dominates this perspective, and students are taught to prioritize the concepts and conditions central to academic research. While useful for those who are interested in continuing for graduate degrees, these textbooks do not adequately represent the world of-or prepare students for-the realities of consumer insights research. This book represents a much-needed alternative. This textbook flips the typical model presented in mass communication research textbooks. In these books, audiences often are primarily framed almost exclusively as participants-presented as a means to generate data. Instead, as students will learn through this text, data should be used to understand people as thoughtful, deliberative audiences. As such, research should be done with the goal of better understanding target audiences in a meaningful way. With this orientation in mind, these insight-driven research projects allow media practitioners and strategic communication professionals to tap into audiences' wants, needs, and desires through messaging and products designed to resonate. This textbook is born of necessity. I have taught undergraduate students in advertising, media production, and public relations research methods courses since 2007. In the ensuing years, I have spent every conference scouring the book publisher's displays, trying desperately to find a book that would do what I needed: accurately reflect the joy and excitement of consumer insights research. I wanted something that would prepare my students for what jobs really look like in this field, while also offering tips on how to do the fast-paced, low-cost research that can be conducted over the course of a semester to give students a "real-world" perspective on how to uncover, interpret, and apply consumer insights. Guided by both my own experience in the field as well as interviews and recommendations with current practitioners on the client, boutique, and agency sides, this book will offer students an accessible, thorough, and compelling perspective on how to plan for and complete a consumer insights research project from the initial request for proposal (RFP) to the final presentation of findings. Features: Each chapter will include: a guide for how to conduct in-class research quotes and recommendations from experts in the field (including representatives from research and insights boutiques; advertising agencies and PR firms; and a wide range of industries (media, consumer packaged goods, travel, finance, etc.) case studies & real world examples

At its core, consumer insights research is fun. Fast-paced, creative, and exciting, working in this field means constant interaction and engagement with people, concepts, and ideas. Consumer insights researchers get to spend their days partnering with clients to solve complex and knotty problems across all mass communication industries, including film, television, digital, advertising, and public relations. They do deep dives to understand the perceptions and perspectives of target audiences using a wide range of approaches and methods. On every project, hours are spent playing with data and ideas, coming up with creative and innovative ways to approach problems and uncover the insights that will lead to effective audience engagement. This work is dynamic and intellectually challenging, celebrating innovative approaches that lead to unique explanations of-and solutions for-important problems. It also is essential to success: Whether you are working on a media product or a strategic communication campaign, successfully reaching your audience and meeting your objectives requires good research. Unfortunately, this is not what our undergraduate students currently experience when using the existing crop of research methods textbooks. Even though journalism, media, applied communication, advertising, and public relations programs typically offer-and often require-at least a foundational research methods course, most undergraduate students do not leave those courses with an accurate understanding of what this field actually entails. Typically written with an emphasis on academic research, those books often are intended for those who plan to follow a very specific path-conduct scholarly research, primarily using quantitative methods. The scientific method dominates this perspective, and students are taught to prioritize the concepts and conditions central to academic research. While useful for those who are interested in continuing for graduate degrees, these textbooks do not adequately represent the world of-or prepare students for-the realities of consumer insights research. This book represents a much-needed alternative. This textbook flips the typical model presented in mass communication research textbooks. In these books, audiences often are primarily framed almost exclusively as participants-presented as a means to generate data. Instead, as students will learn through this text, data should be used to understand people as thoughtful, deliberative audiences. As such, research should be done with the goal of better understanding target audiences in a meaningful way. With this orientation in mind, these insight-driven research projects allow media practitioners and strategic communication professionals to tap into audiences' wants, needs, and desires through messaging and products designed to resonate. This textbook is born of necessity. I have taught undergraduate students in advertising, media production, and public relations research methods courses since 2007. In the ensuing years, I have spent every conference scouring the book publisher's displays, trying desperately to find a book that would do what I needed: accurately reflect the joy and excitement of consumer insights research. I wanted something that would prepare my students for what jobs really look like in this field, while also offering tips on how to do the fast-paced, low-cost research that can be conducted over the course of a semester to give students a "real-world" perspective on how to uncover, interpret, and apply consumer insights. Guided by both my own experience in the field as well as interviews and recommendations with current practitioners on the client, boutique, and agency sides, this book will offer students an accessible, thorough, and compelling perspective on how to plan for and complete a consumer insights research project from the initial request for proposal (RFP) to the final presentation of findings. Features: Each chapter will include: a guide for how to conduct in-class research quotes and recommendations from experts in the field (including representatives from research and insights boutiques; advertising agencies and PR firms; and a wide range of industries (media, consumer packaged goods, travel, finance, etc.) case studies & real world examples

This book examines the most prolific international women's football tournament-the FIFA Women's World Cup-through media, fandom and how mediated women's soccer can improve on a global scale. Women's soccer has exploded in terms of media exposure, television audiences and live spectatorship. This book explores those macro-level issues, while also digging into micro-level topics such as Megan Rapinoe's celebrations and political activism, VAR reviews, LGBTQ imagery, and cultural obstacles for women's football in Central-Eastern Europe and Nigeria. Using an interdisciplinary approach, scholars look at issues through the lenses of feminist theory, cultural studies, rhetorical criticism, political economy, performative sport fandom, autoethnography, and more. Thus, the book is important reading for students, researchers and media practitioners with interests in women's soccer, gender in sports media, coverage of women's sport, and sport fandom.

In the past, sport, particularly football, has been defined as a male domain. Women's interest stereotypically ranges from gentle tolerance to active resistance. But increasingly, women are proudly identifying themselves as supporters of their teams, and have become highly desirable audiences for sport organizations and merchandisers. Football provides a unique site at which to examine the complex interplay between three theoretical areas: identity formation and maintenance, commercialization of cultural practices, and gender hegemony. This book explores how women experience their fandom, and what barriers exist for the female fan.

When Barack Obama was re-elected president in November 2012, his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, took the blame for being alternately too moderate or too conservative. Critics from both within and outside of his party claimed his vast wealth made him unappealing to voters and that his robotic persona meant he just could not connect. How, then, did he win the nomination? What happened during the twelve-month build-up to Romney being named the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party that helped define him as both a man and a candidate? Furthermore, how did media coverage frame his competitors and the race itself, a contest characterized by its rollercoaster nature? Last Man Standing examines mainstream media coverage of the 2012 Republican primary season to identify and examine the frames used to make sense of the candidates and the race. Through an exhaustive analysis of candidate-related coverage from six major media outlets (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post for newspapers; CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for cable news networks), Coombs weaves her examination of media frames into a compelling narrative reconstruction of the 2012 primary season. This book features: .Exhaustive analysis of mainstream media coverage over a twelve-month period .Smart, insightful exploration of media frames .Chronological structure, which allows for analysis to address how frames shift with candidate s fortunes"

This book examines the most prolific international women's football tournament-the FIFA Women's World Cup-through media, fandom and how mediated women's soccer can improve on a global scale. Women's soccer has exploded in terms of media exposure, television audiences and live spectatorship. This book explores those macro-level issues, while also digging into micro-level topics such as Megan Rapinoe's celebrations and political activism, VAR reviews, LGBTQ imagery, and cultural obstacles for women's football in Central-Eastern Europe and Nigeria. Using an interdisciplinary approach, scholars look at issues through the lenses of feminist theory, cultural studies, rhetorical criticism, political economy, performative sport fandom, autoethnography, and more. Thus, the book is important reading for students, researchers and media practitioners with interests in women's soccer, gender in sports media, coverage of women's sport, and sport fandom.

* This is the first book to examine the topic of sport fans and fandom from a multi-disciplinary perspective * Fans are central to sport, and therefore central to understanding and studying sport * Other books have presented particular cases of fans in particular sports, but this book brings together fan studies from around the world and across a wide range of different sports * Includes perspectives from sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, management, psychology, history and media studies

This authoritative one-stop resource provides a rich overview of the evolution and present state of advertising, as well as the multitude of connected issues—data collection, privacy, consumerism, technology, and others—regarding advertising and its role as both a shaper and reflector of American culture. Advertising has become a ubiquitous force in American life, penetrating almost every aspect of our daily routines. Additionally, as technology has evolved throughout American history, so too has advertising proliferated as media has become instantaneous and increasingly sophisticated. Whether it's billboards on the side of the road, the algorithms governing your social media feed, television commercials, or stadiums branded with the names of corporate sponsors/owners, it's almost impossible to escape someone trying to sell you something. This book is a resource for understanding the world behind the advertising jingles and Super Bowl commercials and internet pop-ups and local supermarket flyers. It surveys various advertising media, discusses the social and cultural contexts in which it is consumed, and highlights key moments in the history of advertising in the United States. Furthermore, it features carefully curated information tables, primary documents, personal essays, and other resources to provide readers with a full picture of advertising as both an industry and a shaper of American culture.

In the past, sport, particularly football, has been defined as a male domain. Women s interest stereotypically ranges from gentle tolerance to active resistance. But increasingly, women are proudly identifying themselves as supporters of their teams, and have become highly desirable audiences for sport organizations and merchandisers. Football provides a unique site at which to examine the complex interplay between three theoretical areas: identity formation and maintenance, commercialization of cultural practices, and gender hegemony. This book explores how women experience their fandom, and what barriers exist for the female fan.