Anniversaries, Trajectories, and the Challenges for the Communication of Sport

Abstract

This editorial essay by Communication and Sport Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wenner is drawn from his March 31, 2017, keynote address honoring the 10th meeting of the Communication and Sport Summit convened by the International Association for Communication and Sport (IACS) in Scottsdale, AZ. The first section focuses on anniversaries, noting recent anniversaries of key works, the “coming of age” of the disciplinary area and the publication changes ahead for Communication and Sport as the journal enters its fifth year. The second section considers questions about disciplinary coherence for the study of communication and sport and points to key role that IACS can play in reconciling three distinct dispositions at play in scholarship: (1) media, sports, and society disposition; (2) sport communication as profession disposition; and (3) communication studies and sport disposition. The third section considers key challenges ahead for the study of communication and sport, calling attention to the need for the field to think globally, to avoid ethnocentrism, to grow and embrace an international scholarly agenda that reaches beyond the confines of the west, and to work to diversify and become an inclusive and interdisciplinary community of scholars.