Sport and Culture as Contested Terrain: Americanization in the Caribbean

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Santo Domingo ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Effective Form ◽  
Major League ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Cultural Colonialism

In looking at the “Americanization” of sport in other societies, we are essentially looking at a version of cultural colonialism. Sport, as a segment of popular culture, is certainly an effective form of promoting cultural hegemony. However, this essay argues for the use of cultural resistance as an opposing notion. Based on the author’s study of Dominican baseball, the picture of a tension between hegemonic and resistant cultural forces is summarized and offered as a model to other sports researchers. The Dominican study examined the structural properties of major league baseball’s domination of the sport in the Caribbean. Resistance to major league baseball was not structurally apparent and required looking at more subtle indices. Fans’ preferences for symbols, content analysis of the sports pages in Santo Domingo, and examples of concrete behavior were looked at. Other researchers may find different indices more appropriate, but the use of sport related phenomena are felt to be valuable sources.

Use of an Organizational Weblog in Relationship Building: The Case of a Major League Baseball Team

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Dittmore ◽  
G. Clayton Stoldt ◽  
T. Christopher Greenwell
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Commitment ◽  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Sport Organizations ◽  
Effective Form ◽  
Major League ◽  
Baseball Team

This case study explores the use a Major League Baseball team’s organizational weblog. Organizational weblogs are forums for the 2-way exchange of information and commentary between an organization and its publics. Most sport organizations, however, have yet to embrace the weblog as a form of organizational communication. Recent research suggests a greater need to understand how sport organizations might use weblogs to outreach to target audiences from a communications perspective. This study assesses whether readers perceive an organization’s official weblog to be an effective form of 2-way communication and profiles the readers of an organizational weblog based on demographics, consumption patterns, and points of attachment. Results showed that readers perceived the organizational weblog to be highly conversational and effective at communicating organizational commitment. In addition, readers were voracious media consumers of the team’s games, repeat ticket customers, and highly identified, both with the sport and with the team.

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