2024 BEA Diversity and Inclusion Research Award: Kim Fox, American University in Cairo, David Dowling, University of Iowa & Kyle J. Miller Northwest Missouri State University; Advocacy and Activism in Sports Podcasting, Expanding Journalistic Roles
For Immediate Release: April 2, 2024
Contact: Heather Birks |
Washington, D.C. – The 2024 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Diversity and Inclusion Research Award has been presented to Kim Fox, American University in Cairo, David Dowling, University of Iowa & Kyle J. Miller Northwest Missouri State University for their paper Advocacy and Activism in Sports Podcasting, Expanding Journalistic Roles.
This project examines the political turn in sports podcasting, focusing on the blurring boundaries of journalistic roles in evolving production practice. The sports podcasts Social Sport, Burn It All Down (BIAD) and Edge of Sports offer three case studies of how podcasting opens space for politicizing sports coverage beyond scores and highlights. Podcasting has disrupted the athlete-media relationship in such a way that athletes can now take on an advocacy/activist role by directly speaking for themselves and controlling their own storytelling. Podcast coverage of sports has adapted by focusing on the political implications of athletes’ personal stories. Analysis of selected episodes from the cases above, including episodic content and interview correspondence with podcast host(s), focuses on how the podcast medium has opened new spaces advancing the cultural discourse on how issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion impact athletes’ lives. Journalistic role conception, in particular, has expanded to include advocacy functions, which in turn impact production practice toward more socially progressive content than traditional media coverage has allowed due to the unique affordances of the podcast medium.
The BEA Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) committee works to support BEA’s mission to take seriously our leadership responsibility to provide equal access and opportunity by fostering academic excellence, diversity, and inclusion among students, faculty, and media professionals. The BEA D&I committee seeks to promote research and creative work that addresses issues of diversity and inclusion in areas of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, country of origin, political affiliation, veteran status, field of research, socioeconomic status, religion, age, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Each year the committee reviews award candidates that have been self-selected from BEA’s interest division research competitions and the Festival of Media Arts faculty creative competition.
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About the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) – BEA is the professional association for professors, industry professionals and graduate students interested in teaching and research related to electronic media and multimedia enterprises. There are currently more than 2,500 individual and institutional members worldwide. Visit www.beaweb.org for more information.
