Final Paper Prompt
Com 328 Sports Media
Spring 2024
Assignment Task: In your final paper, you will select a sports media trend of your choice, be it a set of sports broadcasts, a sports talk show or YouTube channel, an eSports Twitch trend, a marketing campaign for a sports league, promotional videos for a professional fight, or an internet-based form of sports media entertainment. For example, one could study how modern athletes use platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to grow their brand. Your paper will incorporate all the skills you have learned in the span of this semester (summary, analysis, and connection).
Unlike previous papers, in this final paper, you will need to properly situate the sports media text/trend you are analyzing. This involves identifying what media company/organization produces it, its genre style, and its main media personalities, influencers, and stars. Ideally, your thesis statement should be crafted in relation to a media critic’s argument about your chosen sports media text/trend. In practical terms, this means you need to search for academic articles or op-eds by a major newspaper/magazine that address your chosen topic and media outlet.
Lastly, your paper must engage how sports media fulfills the basic human need to be part of a cultural tribe or social collective and often functions as a proxy for something else like race, gender, region/place, nationality, or civic religion. While an intersectional analysis is encouraged (i.e., an analysis that considers the nexus between multiple identity categories), you do not need to fully cover every single possible identity in one paper. You can emphasize one main identity over others.
These are the three core intellectual themes that we’ve engaged in class that could guide your media analysis paper, particularly your thesis and the conclusion section.
How do the sociological & psychological aspects of sports media connect to the business of sports media? Is this primarily harmless, or does it amount to audience exploitation?
Why are the professional ethics of sports journalism and commercial sports entertainment so often in tension?
Does sports media challenge stereotypes and dominant ideologies or reinforce them?
Format requirements: The paper must be 6-7 pages in length, double to 1.5 spaced, 12-point font, and 1-inch margins. No spaces between paragraphs. You will be docked points for not following these format requirements. Quotes over three lines must be formatted into a single-spaced block quote (Google search “block quote”). I encourage the use of screenshots and photos to illustrate the media you’re analyzing but only writing counts toward the length requirements (e.g., if an image takes up half the page, your paper should be 7½ pages). The paper must use in-text citations, and the last page must include a bibliography of the works cited, including videos or films.
Due date: May 21st at 11:59PM. Must be uploaded on Blackboard via SafeAssign. See “content” section. It must be in Word or PDF format.
Plagiarism: Using another person’s words and writing or AI-generated writing will result in an automatic F grade, likely leading to a failed grade in the course overall.
Paper structure guidelines:
Introduction (one to two pages)
Set up the text (basic info, media/institutional origin, genre, connections to other media trends). In short, tell the reader what the media trend/text is like in a nutshell. (three or four sentences).
Method: Explain the range of media content you will analyze and make a case for why the media object you picked is typical or representative of broader media trends. If you analyze only one episode or one sports broadcast, offer ticket sales, ratings, or social media metrics that indicate its popularity, reach, audience size, or potential societal impact. Put plainly, you need to answer the question: Why does this sports media trend matter? Why should the reader care? (three or four sentences)
Analytical framework: Identify the essential formal elements of the media text you will explore such as its narrative structure (e.g., the underdog that defeats the champion), core binaries (e.g., hero vs. villain, blue-collar player vs. flashy player), and the media production techniques that add drama and give the sport greater meaning (e.g., visual aesthetics, video graphics, music, camerawork). Additionally, a key theoretical concept, or set of key concepts, from the course readings needs to be cited. Very briefly explain how your chosen concept helps “see” the deeper aspects of the sports media trend/text. **These concepts can be introduced in the roadmap section.
Thesis: Articulate a critical thesis about your chosen media text or trend. Often, the best way to form your own argument is to read another writer’s critical commentary on the topic and then position your argument for or against their thesis. This strategy involves doing some research to find a critical essay or op-ed about your chosen sports media trend. Ultimately, your argument should engage the underlying politics of your sports media text, which comes out through the social identities it highlights (e.g., race, class, gender) and ideologies it implicitly promotes (e.g., ‘traditional masculinity,’ whiteness, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, Orientalism, etc…). (Half of a paragraph)
(half of a paragraph)
Roadmap paragraph: Layout the contents of the body section and the order of the paper. (One paragraph). For example, “The first section of this paper will….Next section will address…….Lastly, the paper will conclude… (half of a paragraph)
Structure for paper’s body section (four to five pages)
—First sub-claim followed by 1st example or set of examples
—Second sub-claim followed by 2nd example or set of examples
—Third sub-claim followed by 3rd example or set of examples
—Fourth sub-claim followed by 4th example or set of examples
Essential writing requirements for the body section:
Must include transition sentences between these paragraphs.
Must offer close readings, specific and pointed details, and AVOID extended summarizing.
It must utilize the theoretical concepts mentioned in the introduction.
Body paragraphs must follow the AXES (i.e., Assertion, eXample, Explanation, Significance) structure. However, in certain cases, you could devote a paragraph to just Assertion and eXample and then transition and devote a paragraph to “Explanation” and “Significance.” The “Explanation” component can be extended. It could entail using and explaining a concept through quotes as long as it is tightlyrelated to the evidence mentioned in the previous sentence (the eXample component). References and connections to other sports media trends can also be used as a form of “explanation,” again if they are tightly related to the evidence and media text.
Conclusion (one and a half pages)
Brief reiteration of the sub-claims of the body and its tie to your overarching thesis (one paragraph)
The audience’s uses and gratifications: hypothesize about how you think the viewers use the sports media text(s) you analyzed and what they get out of it. What is this media text’s function in society? While not necessary, any evidence to support your hypothesis helps.
Mirror or distortion of reality: Articulate a clear argument about how the sports media text measures up to your own sense of social reality or to other sources of evidence about the social world (e.g., sociological research, statistics, etc…). Is its representation of the social world insightful and realistic, or is it distorting, inaccurate, and fantastical?
Harmful or helpful: Conclude with a strong argument about the sports media trends’s larger political-social significance. Is this sports media trend harmful or helpful to society? How does its representation have broader implications that go beyond the sports media trend itself? Why is the sports media trend much more than mere entertainment?
