New media technologies have become a central part of the sports media
landscape. Sports fans use new media to watch games, discuss sports
transactions, form fan-based communities, and secure minutiae about
their favorite players and teams. Never before have fans known so much
about athletes, whether that happens via Twitter feeds, fan sites, or
blogs, and never before have the lines between producer, consumer,
enactor, fan and athlete been more blurred. The Internet has made
virtually everything available for sports media consumption; it has also
made understanding sports media substantially more complex.
The Routledge Handbook of Sport and New Media is the most
comprehensive and in-depth study of the impact of new media in sport
ever to be published. Adopting a broad, interdisciplinary approach, the
book explores new media in sport as a cultural, social, commercial,
economic, and technological phenomenon, examining the profound impact of
digital technologies on the way that sport is produced, consumed and
understood. There is no aspect of social life or commercial activity in
general that is not being radically influenced by the rise of new media
forms, and by offering a "state of the field" survey of work in this
area, the Routledge Handbook of Sport and New Media is important
reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an
interest in sports studies, media studies or communication studies.
