INCOMES 2010 – Closing ceremony Outubro 28, 2010

Rui Novais closed the INCOMES saying thank you to all the participants for their presentations and had a word of thanks to the members of organisation.

After the closing ceremony, Rui Novais made a positive balance, highlighting the work submitted by participants at the University of Porto. “We had the opportunity to hear our students making presentations in a very demanding international setting, so it’s always good to have this feedback in which, in general, people are satisfied.”

The INCOMES had the aim of giving space and light to academic studies. The teacher in University of Porto seems satisfied, since amongst “a universe of 12 speakers, having 3 students from University of Porto is very good for an event of this dimention. Because of the quality of the presentations they have made the fact that they are dealing with issues of interest and importance, I think the balance is necessarily positive.”

Panel 4 – Issues in media coverage of sports II Outubro 28, 2010

This second panel on case studies on media coverage of sports was opened by Andrei Păunescu, from Spiru Haret University, who delivered a presentation of his research about ‘Aggressive Language and Conflict in Live Sport Events’. The researcher has worked as TV producer, and states that violence is actually appreciated by people in television. The sports field are usually chosen as places to unleash violence, but violence amongst athletes can be dangerous as far as they are seen as role models. Television displays violence because it is considered to be part of society, but at the same time the depiction of it can also incentive more violence. Violent language could be deleted, since “language of the media can be used to change reality”, but that’s hard to happen.

Toussaint Nothias, from King’s College London, presented a paper on ‘Sport mega-event, media and Afro pessimism: French and UK newspaper coverage of the 2010 FIFA world Cup in South Africa’. The researcher analysed newspapers from both countries and found out that the country, as well as the whole continent, was mentioned with many concerns about the political environment and social issues, but at the end the outcome was surprisingly well succeeded.

‘Fighting for Rating. New Trends in the Construction of Sports News into the Context of Globalization’ was the INCOMES last presentation. Bianca Marina Mitu, from University of Bucharest, stated that sports have become a media show, as they emphasize facts, like gossip, that catch the public’s attention beyond the sport itself. There is a connection between sports and public sphere, since some sport issues become subject of public debates, for example, when sports events become catalysts to a debate about other issues such as drug comsumption, etc. This is augmented by the stong connection between sports and television and the fact that TV has become the “agora” of today’s society.

This panel was chaired by Teresa Lacerda (University of Porto).

Panel 3 – Issues in media coverage of sports I Outubro 28, 2010

The first panel of the day started with Rui Novais and Tatiane Figueiredo’s ‘Flags Online? Portuguese and Brazilian reporting of the 2010 World Cup qualifying group’, presented by professor Rui Novais. The researchers’ comparison between the media coverage of three Brazilian and three Portuguese newspapers during FIFA World Cup 2010 coverage concluded that there are vestiges of cultural bias on news coverage, but not always nationality interferes with editors choices.

Carlos Brás, from Universidade de Évora, presented his work ‘Olympic excellence, demographics and geography’ on the possible relation between these three factors. The investigation was based on the analysis of the 204 countries that took part in the Beijing Olympics. More populated nations have tendency to develop new talents in sports who reach significance in their areas, winning several medals. Further investigations would include economic factors in the formula to track what brings Olympic excellence. Some questions were raised concerning the explanation for small countries that reach good results in Olympics.

David Fernandes and Joana Coelho (Universidade do Porto) closed the panel with their work on ‘Gender and Sports: Barcelona 2010′. The analysis of news coverage of the European Athletics Championship of 2010, taken place in Barcelona, found out that countries tend to give further coverage of women sports due to having more good results in feminine sports than the ratio in other countries, as happened in Portugal. The analysis covered also French and Spanish newspapers, concluding that, in general, female athletes are discriminated when depicted by the media.

INCOMES – day two Outubro 28, 2010

The second day of the International Conference on Media and Sports has just started. There will be two panels on Issues in Media Coverage of Sports.

You can keep track of what’s happening through the hashtag #incomes2010 or visit us on Facebook.

Richard Haynes – Televising the World Cup Outubro 27, 2010

The Director of Stirling Media Research Institute University of Stirling (UK) presented the issue of ‘Televising the World Cup: A Cultural History of Technological Rhetoric’. Richard Haynes explained the evolution of TV coverage of sports, based on World Cup coverages in the last 60 years, and how the public cope with the information provided by the news.

The researcher explained how the close relationship between broadcasters and organisers has started and the World Cup got to be considered important news in generalistic news coverage. The importance of TV, at the beginning very limited by the costs of purchase, was taken over by evolution of technology, like color TV and cheaper equipments, that made it become part of people’s lives.

According to Haynes, we’re living an Age of convergence, with full coverage such as BBC Sport’s for the World Cup, joining multimedia elements to the narrative, which had more visits than FIFA website. Sport events like Fifa World Cup “are very important drivers of new technology”. For the future, coverage can explore the market of 3D technology in further mega sports events.

Panel 2 – Televised sports Outubro 27, 2010

The second panel goes further in the theme of coverage in mega events, specially the coverage made by television.

The afternoon’s panel concerning televised sports started with Thomas Horky who presented a study on ‘Structures of large Football tournaments on television: A longitudinal and fine analysis concerning the quality of TV-broadcasts of large Football evenings’. The study was based on German’s media coverage of football events. The World Cup in particular is one of the most significant events in the world. To prove it is the fact that the WC final between Germany and Spain had 82% of share in Germany. The speaker also talked about new ways of analysing and broadcasting events like pre-events, moderating and post analysis.

Then Mark Stauff’s study on ‘Translating Space and Time: The Contribution of Sport’s Mega Events to Television’s ongoing Transformation’ was presented. The author said that sports mega events are used to introduce new media and explained the many possibilities that HDTV offers regarding sport events.

The presentations continued with the paper ‘”Us and them?” European Identity in the German and British Television Broadcasts of the Football World Cup 2010′, by Cordula Nitsch and Dennis Lichtenstein from Universität Augsburg. Nitsch and Lichtenstein began by saying that the community builds in function of sports and gains a collective identity. The authors analysed British and German TV commentaries during 2010’s World Cup and reached the conclusion that these TV comments give more information on European identity, and only a small minority focus on non-European characteristics. Although the majority of the commentaries refers to European identity, they don’t give advantage to the European teams or identity.

The panel closed with the presentation of Karin Becker about ‘Constructing the Image of the Fan – The World Cup 2010′. Becker said that TV has a primordial role on creating image of the events and the participants on those events. Facebook, Twitter, TV and media parks are sites in which fans identity is build. “Social identity is strongly noticed than individual and it can be noticed in all fans within different nations”, said Becker.

Panel 1 – Regulation of media events Outubro 27, 2010

Kim de Beer, from University of Amsterdam, presented a paper on ‘Freedom of Speech and the FIFA World Cup – Score: FIFA – Freedom of Speech 2-1?’. About this subject, the author concluded that FIFA has a strong bargainig position and should act in conformity with freedom of speech principles.

Alexandre Miguel Mestre, from Lusofona University, presented a paper on ‘The Olympic Charter: What kind of regulation for the interplay between the Olympics and the Media’ in wich he explains the role of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its charter in the Olympic Games’ media regulation. For instance, the charter defines where journalists must be placed.

The panel’s chair was Ana Luísa Pereira, from University of Porto.

Richard Haynes’s seminar on media research Outubro 27, 2010

The Director of Stirling Media Research Institute University of Stirling (UK) will perform a seminar right after his intervention in INCOMES. Richard Haynes’s seminar “Finding a question for media research” will start at 18.00h, in Anfiteatro 1 (the same place as the conference).

Andrew Billings – The Olympic Games storytelling Outubro 27, 2010

The investigator from University of Indiana presented at INCOMES the theme “The television production of a mega event: the Olympic Games storytelling”. The speaker connected to Oporto through a videoconference from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

Andrew Billings’s study covered the Olympic Games media coverage from 1996 to 2006. It has concluded that whereas the media coverage is quite fair concerning gender (women sports gets about 45% coverage), ethnicy is not of major concern and that nationality is pivotal issue: national media coverage tends to focus more on sports where the country has more proeminence. But there is also a tendency to cover top athletes, regardless of their nationality.

The researcher emphasized, at the beginning of the conference, the importance of television coverage, since the US population has an average television consumption hours (more than 8hrs) superior to the time people spend sleeping (about 7hrs).

Another important issue brought up in the talk regards the massive coverage of the event. Billings mentioned the case of the NBC, that got the television rights to broadcast the Beijing Olympics in the US, and spread it to about 2.000 journalists from many other media companies.

INCOMES is on! Outubro 27, 2010

The International Conference on Media and Sport brings to Oporto investigators in the field of communication sciences to talk about the media coverage of sports mega events. The first issue in the morning is the videoconference of Andrew Billings, from University of Indiana (USA), who will discuss the media coverage of the Olympic Games in China.

The conference counts on speakers from different nationalities, many of which arrived since the very beginning, coming from Amsterdam, Augsburg, Stockholm, London and so on. The full schedule is available in this page.

The live coverage can be followed though our Twitter account @incomes2010cc.