Who’s Playing Ball?

If the ball starts in the middle at Women in Sports Media, it then gets thrown to the journalists, then to the sports of focus, then to the commentators, then to the audience, then to how the audience consumes it and then to what they think of it, the response. So who’s playing ball for my DA? Well, I just told you in summary.

Researching requires a field map, who’s playing ball? How do they link? Honestly, the map is a messy diagram and it the colours of it don’t really help the situation as it hardly links. The actual diagram itself is more for me than you guys, the post on the other hand will help you guys instead. This post will chat about all the craziness and decipher how the map below is a beautiful overview of my DA.

The actors (the people/things that are a part of the action or process) involved in this research are the female sports journalists, female commentators and audience members that are consuming what they have to say. A few names on the map are the same in different sections. This is because sports journalists (journos) also tend to dabble in commentating as well, such as Natalie Pinkham, who was the first female to commentate Formula 1 in 2021. Which is why she is underlined on the particular map above.

To access all of the media that these women produce is through the non-actors, which play a critical role in media consumption. How do you consume your media? Podcasts, TV, news stories, Google suggested stories, Newspapers at your local coffee stop, Facebook and/or Twitter. You can get access to it in hundreds of different ways. What creates it interesting is the different personas that the actors use over various networks.

To use Natalie Pinkham as an example again, her online network is built through Formula One Sky News, but she has all the common forms of media, including Instagram and Twitter. I’ll link her profiles below but after a quick scroll, you can see the different personas that she portrays to her audience on the varied platforms. As a summary you can see her Instagram is a closer look into her home life, what she is like as a mum, wife and friend and her Twitter is a professional profile where she re-shares interesting stories and promotes her own podcasts and news stories.

https://www.instagram.com/natalie_pinkham/

Tweets by NataliePinkham

This is all important because it allows the audience to interact with Pinkham on different sites. It becomes interesting to study as the interactions can vary, making the ethnographic study and the reaction these women get so fascinating. It does become a lot to unpack, which is where the previous post (Niche, you can find the post at the bottom of this one) comes in, making the research more specific to a question.

Already there is a lot on the field, a map is a great way to set it all out. The field map acts as talking points.

To hear about how it links to my own interests listen to the audio clip linked.