Olan Scott
Olan Scott, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Sport Management. In my research, I explore the intersection of sport, business, and the media (print, electronic, and social).
My research has been presented at many domestic and international conferences, such as North American Society for Sport Management, European Association for Sport Management, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Sport Marketing Association, and Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand.
I have published academic articles in Sport Management Review, First Monday, and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Further, I have several other articles either in review or in press in these and other journals. A full CV is available on request.
I actively use Twitter (@olanscott) and my personal website (http://olanscott.com) to disseminate information about my teaching and research. Further, I use these media to learn more about relevant teaching and researching topics by engaging with others in academia and the sport industry.
My research has been presented at many domestic and international conferences, such as North American Society for Sport Management, European Association for Sport Management, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Sport Marketing Association, and Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand.
I have published academic articles in Sport Management Review, First Monday, and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Further, I have several other articles either in review or in press in these and other journals. A full CV is available on request.
I actively use Twitter (@olanscott) and my personal website (http://olanscott.com) to disseminate information about my teaching and research. Further, I use these media to learn more about relevant teaching and researching topics by engaging with others in academia and the sport industry.
less
InterestsView All (17)
Uploads
The full text of the paper is available here: http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ijsc.2017-0060
This study explored gender differences within the Australian primetime broadcast of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games. Forty-five broadcast hours from the Seven Network were examined regarding clock-time, name mentions, and descriptions divided by biological sex, finding that the Seven Network devoted nearly equal clock-time to male and female athletes, yet 14 of the top 20 most mentioned athletes (70%) were men. In terms of word-by-word descriptors, gender differences were also uncovered on many levels relating to attributions of athletic success, failure, personality, and physicality. The findings of this study suggest that—at least within an Australian sports context—gender portrayals ranged from relative equality to significant differences depending on the metric employed. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.
Full paper available here http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1012690217710690 or linked here https://olanscott.com/2017/04/27/academic-publications-as-of-27417/
a professional rugby union team based in the capital of Australia. Although sport only makes up a small percentage
of overall television programming, around half of all content posted to Twitter in 2013 was related to sport (Neilsen,
2014). Facebook, Instagram, blogs and other social media are also extensively used by sport organizations, athletes
and consumers. Therefore it is increasingly important for sport organizations and athletes to prioritise these
platforms in their marketing, communications, public relations, and management strategies (Hambrick, Simmons,
Greenhalgh, & Greenwell, 2010); as social media give these actors an unfiltered voice in an increasingly cluttered
marketplace (Wallace, Wilson, & Miloch, 2011; Scott, Bruffy, & Naylor, in press).
organizations attempt to embrace this emerging medium to engage
with sports fans around the world. While many sports fans use Twitter
globally, Chinese sports fans primarily embrace localized social media
platforms, such as Weibo, to follow their favourite teams because
many international mainstream social media services are banned in
China. This study aimed to investigate the similarities and differences
between Chinese National Basketball Association (NBA) fans and
Western NBA fans in terms of their social media usage and points of
attachment to a team with a global presence. The results revealed that
Chinese digital NBA fans expressed higher dependence on using social
media in their daily life compared to Western counterparts. In terms
of sports fans’ points of attachment, Chinese NBA fans had higher
associations with basketball, NBA players, and the NBA than Western
counterparts, while Western fans perceived a higher attachment to
the team.
The full version of the paper is available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690217697476
In the context of international sporting contests, which typically attract great interest globally, the coverage of these events by newspapers help to define, influence, and sometimes reflect mainstream beliefs. Although media consumers have no influence over how stories are framed, editors and journalists can construct their narratives and stories to attract, maintain, and foster continued media consumption (Scott, Zakus, & Hill, 2014; Vincent & Crossman, 2012). Informed by framing theory, this study strove to investigate how two nations’ coverage of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) was characterised. Framing occurs as the media actively select certain aspects of an issue to report, affecting the understanding of the message people receive (Entman, 2007).
Framing is prominent in sport communication and sport media. In their study on the FIFA Football World Cup, Scott, Zakus, and Hill (2012) suggested that “gaining an understanding of the framing processes used by media in their construction of social and political issues is important due to its influence on attitudes and beliefs of audiences” (p.24). Bie and Billings’s (2014) study on how Chinese and American newspapers covered the success of Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen at the 2012 London Olympic Games revealed dramatically different coverage in the two nations.
This study sought to investigate how the 2015 RWC held in England (and Cardiff) in September and October 2015 was covered in two nations: Australia and New Zealand. These nations’ news coverage was selected to collect a distinctive understanding into how nationalism and feeling of patriotism were perpetuated in the coverage of the RWC. Each of these nations has a strong history in rugby union and consumption (both spectatorship and participation) of the sport is wide-ranging, offering a unique understanding into the coverage of the RWC.
For each of the two nations, a search on Factiva (an online information and research repository of media coverage), was conducted and every relevant RWC article was downloaded and coded. Providing a deeper understanding of how the same event was framed not only answers the call from Whannel (2000) for more cross-cultural research into sporting events, but also provides further insight into how two nations’ newspapers framed the RWC.
Preliminary results indicated that (i) coaching and coach’s’ thoughts, (ii) tournament progression and match analysis, and (iii) national pride and interest were key themes in Australia and New Zealand. Of interest is a comparison between Australia and New Zealand reporting on national pride and interest. Australian newspapers reported a lack of whole nation interest in Rugby Union over recent years which was altered as the team successfully progressed through the tournament. New Zealand reporting featured an unwavering trust and belief in the ability of their national team. Despite less than convincing performance in the opening matches, newspaper reporting rarely doubted the team’s ability or the belief that a consecutive RWC title would be won.
Sport consumers are avid users of technology (Kelly, 2013) and express themselves and access information using a myriad of different devices, including assessing information while watching a match, whether that be on television or in the venue. Sport organizations were early adopters of social media and have embedded its benefits into marketing (Eagleman, 2013), communications (Thompson, 2013), CSR (Scott, Bruffy, & Naylor, 2015), and other areas of organizational focus. Social media gives organizations (teams, leagues, or other), athletes, and consumers an unfiltered voice in an ever-increasingly cluttered media-marketplace. Traditionally, media content was vetted by journalists and producers or editors who had the final decision on whether a story was newsworthy. However, the adoption of social media platforms by sport organizations has enabled all users to have complete control over their message (Scott, Hill, & Zakus, 2014). As this relatively new approach continues to grow, it is important for those involved in sport communication and marketing to understand social media from a consumer standpoint.
To date, much of the research in social media has had its focus on content analysis of social media consumer posts through content analytic methodologies on Facebook (Evans, 2010; Scott, Bradshaw, & Larkin, 2012), Twitter (Blaszka, Burch, Frederick, Clavio, & Walsh, 2012; Frederick, Lim, Lim, Clavio, Pedersen, & Burch, 2014; Pegoraro, 2010), and blogs (Clavio & Eagleman, 2011; Kwak, Kim, & Zimmerman, 2010). Further, studies on social media have recently begun to be criticised by a variety of sport scholars. Some of these criticisms will seek to be addressed in this study. Billings (2014) suggested that social media stuides, in particular Twitter, overextend their claims about both the reach and the power of social media and generalise social media content to the general population rather than the online population. Hardin (2014) suggested that many studies on social media did not advance or extend theory or were not sufficiently grounded, while Pedersen (2014) also commented that studies on social media were easy to crank “out numerous social media thematic/content analyses and surveys”, which are “not overly taxing or time consuming” (Pedersen, 2014, p. 114). This study seeks to mitigate the criticisms of social media research by analysing a professional sport team’s social media community using a robust theoretical framework to segment the team’s social media users and to understand user behaviors into why consumers choose to follow a team online.
Data were collected from fans of the Canberra Raiders, a professional team participating in National Rugby League (NRL). The NRL is the top professional rugby competition in Australasia with teams in Australia and New Zealand. The NRL is one of the most attended sport leagues in Australasia and its State of Origin and Grand Final matches are generally in the top-10 most viewed programs annually in Australia. The Canberra Raiders entered the NRL in 1982 and have experienced mixed success in its history. It has reached the Grand Final five times and winning three times, but it has also finished out of the finals many times. A link to an online survey assessing fan’s social media engagement was posted by the team to its various online platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the team’s website, and in the team’s electronic newsletter. The online survey was active for several weeks during the second half of the 2015 season and collected 738 usable responses.
In addition to questions that generated demographic profiles, the survey collected mixed method data which assessed the social media platforms fans used to engage with the team, the frequency in which this engagement occurred, and qualitative data explaining how this experience could be improved. The survey also included nine involvement items (Beaton, Funk, Ridinger, & Jordan, 2011; Doyle, Kunkel, & Funk, 2013) assessing the individual’s psychological connection to the team, which were used to segment the sample into the four stages proposed by Funk and James’ (2001) Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) - Awareness, Attraction, Attachment and Allegiance.
Segmentation results placed 33 people in Awareness, 87 people in Attraction, 255 people in Attachment and 366 into the Allegiance stage. This distribution confirmed the majority of the sample was highly engaged consumers. Preliminary results indicate that individuals in the higher PCM stages interact with the team across a broader spectrum of social media channels, view more types of content on these platforms and do so for longer periods than those in the lower stages. Interestingly, individuals in the Allegiance stage engaged with the team on social media significantly more than those in the Attachment stage. Qualitative analysis indicated that consumers across the stages perceived the team could improve their experience by augmenting the content posted (e.g., more insights from coaches, players and more competitions) and by establishing more online identities (e.g., Snapchat, Vine). Additionally, there were suggestions that more co-creational activities (e.g., polls, fan feedback) would help enhance the connection the between the consumer and the team (e.g., Uhrich, 2014).
The main outcome from this study will be an extension of an existing theoretical framework into the analysis of online consumers, who may not live in a geographic proximity to the team and also whose fandom to the team may be variable. In addition, this study helps to bridge the gap between studies on social media and the use of theories that will help information marketing practice. Additionally, this research provides implications for sport organizations who can augment their content, and online presence based on these findings to develop fans that display a greater range of behaviors which benefit sport organizations.
The full text of the paper is available here: http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ijsc.2017-0060
This study explored gender differences within the Australian primetime broadcast of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games. Forty-five broadcast hours from the Seven Network were examined regarding clock-time, name mentions, and descriptions divided by biological sex, finding that the Seven Network devoted nearly equal clock-time to male and female athletes, yet 14 of the top 20 most mentioned athletes (70%) were men. In terms of word-by-word descriptors, gender differences were also uncovered on many levels relating to attributions of athletic success, failure, personality, and physicality. The findings of this study suggest that—at least within an Australian sports context—gender portrayals ranged from relative equality to significant differences depending on the metric employed. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.
Full paper available here http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1012690217710690 or linked here https://olanscott.com/2017/04/27/academic-publications-as-of-27417/
a professional rugby union team based in the capital of Australia. Although sport only makes up a small percentage
of overall television programming, around half of all content posted to Twitter in 2013 was related to sport (Neilsen,
2014). Facebook, Instagram, blogs and other social media are also extensively used by sport organizations, athletes
and consumers. Therefore it is increasingly important for sport organizations and athletes to prioritise these
platforms in their marketing, communications, public relations, and management strategies (Hambrick, Simmons,
Greenhalgh, & Greenwell, 2010); as social media give these actors an unfiltered voice in an increasingly cluttered
marketplace (Wallace, Wilson, & Miloch, 2011; Scott, Bruffy, & Naylor, in press).
organizations attempt to embrace this emerging medium to engage
with sports fans around the world. While many sports fans use Twitter
globally, Chinese sports fans primarily embrace localized social media
platforms, such as Weibo, to follow their favourite teams because
many international mainstream social media services are banned in
China. This study aimed to investigate the similarities and differences
between Chinese National Basketball Association (NBA) fans and
Western NBA fans in terms of their social media usage and points of
attachment to a team with a global presence. The results revealed that
Chinese digital NBA fans expressed higher dependence on using social
media in their daily life compared to Western counterparts. In terms
of sports fans’ points of attachment, Chinese NBA fans had higher
associations with basketball, NBA players, and the NBA than Western
counterparts, while Western fans perceived a higher attachment to
the team.
The full version of the paper is available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690217697476
In the context of international sporting contests, which typically attract great interest globally, the coverage of these events by newspapers help to define, influence, and sometimes reflect mainstream beliefs. Although media consumers have no influence over how stories are framed, editors and journalists can construct their narratives and stories to attract, maintain, and foster continued media consumption (Scott, Zakus, & Hill, 2014; Vincent & Crossman, 2012). Informed by framing theory, this study strove to investigate how two nations’ coverage of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) was characterised. Framing occurs as the media actively select certain aspects of an issue to report, affecting the understanding of the message people receive (Entman, 2007).
Framing is prominent in sport communication and sport media. In their study on the FIFA Football World Cup, Scott, Zakus, and Hill (2012) suggested that “gaining an understanding of the framing processes used by media in their construction of social and political issues is important due to its influence on attitudes and beliefs of audiences” (p.24). Bie and Billings’s (2014) study on how Chinese and American newspapers covered the success of Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen at the 2012 London Olympic Games revealed dramatically different coverage in the two nations.
This study sought to investigate how the 2015 RWC held in England (and Cardiff) in September and October 2015 was covered in two nations: Australia and New Zealand. These nations’ news coverage was selected to collect a distinctive understanding into how nationalism and feeling of patriotism were perpetuated in the coverage of the RWC. Each of these nations has a strong history in rugby union and consumption (both spectatorship and participation) of the sport is wide-ranging, offering a unique understanding into the coverage of the RWC.
For each of the two nations, a search on Factiva (an online information and research repository of media coverage), was conducted and every relevant RWC article was downloaded and coded. Providing a deeper understanding of how the same event was framed not only answers the call from Whannel (2000) for more cross-cultural research into sporting events, but also provides further insight into how two nations’ newspapers framed the RWC.
Preliminary results indicated that (i) coaching and coach’s’ thoughts, (ii) tournament progression and match analysis, and (iii) national pride and interest were key themes in Australia and New Zealand. Of interest is a comparison between Australia and New Zealand reporting on national pride and interest. Australian newspapers reported a lack of whole nation interest in Rugby Union over recent years which was altered as the team successfully progressed through the tournament. New Zealand reporting featured an unwavering trust and belief in the ability of their national team. Despite less than convincing performance in the opening matches, newspaper reporting rarely doubted the team’s ability or the belief that a consecutive RWC title would be won.
Sport consumers are avid users of technology (Kelly, 2013) and express themselves and access information using a myriad of different devices, including assessing information while watching a match, whether that be on television or in the venue. Sport organizations were early adopters of social media and have embedded its benefits into marketing (Eagleman, 2013), communications (Thompson, 2013), CSR (Scott, Bruffy, & Naylor, 2015), and other areas of organizational focus. Social media gives organizations (teams, leagues, or other), athletes, and consumers an unfiltered voice in an ever-increasingly cluttered media-marketplace. Traditionally, media content was vetted by journalists and producers or editors who had the final decision on whether a story was newsworthy. However, the adoption of social media platforms by sport organizations has enabled all users to have complete control over their message (Scott, Hill, & Zakus, 2014). As this relatively new approach continues to grow, it is important for those involved in sport communication and marketing to understand social media from a consumer standpoint.
To date, much of the research in social media has had its focus on content analysis of social media consumer posts through content analytic methodologies on Facebook (Evans, 2010; Scott, Bradshaw, & Larkin, 2012), Twitter (Blaszka, Burch, Frederick, Clavio, & Walsh, 2012; Frederick, Lim, Lim, Clavio, Pedersen, & Burch, 2014; Pegoraro, 2010), and blogs (Clavio & Eagleman, 2011; Kwak, Kim, & Zimmerman, 2010). Further, studies on social media have recently begun to be criticised by a variety of sport scholars. Some of these criticisms will seek to be addressed in this study. Billings (2014) suggested that social media stuides, in particular Twitter, overextend their claims about both the reach and the power of social media and generalise social media content to the general population rather than the online population. Hardin (2014) suggested that many studies on social media did not advance or extend theory or were not sufficiently grounded, while Pedersen (2014) also commented that studies on social media were easy to crank “out numerous social media thematic/content analyses and surveys”, which are “not overly taxing or time consuming” (Pedersen, 2014, p. 114). This study seeks to mitigate the criticisms of social media research by analysing a professional sport team’s social media community using a robust theoretical framework to segment the team’s social media users and to understand user behaviors into why consumers choose to follow a team online.
Data were collected from fans of the Canberra Raiders, a professional team participating in National Rugby League (NRL). The NRL is the top professional rugby competition in Australasia with teams in Australia and New Zealand. The NRL is one of the most attended sport leagues in Australasia and its State of Origin and Grand Final matches are generally in the top-10 most viewed programs annually in Australia. The Canberra Raiders entered the NRL in 1982 and have experienced mixed success in its history. It has reached the Grand Final five times and winning three times, but it has also finished out of the finals many times. A link to an online survey assessing fan’s social media engagement was posted by the team to its various online platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the team’s website, and in the team’s electronic newsletter. The online survey was active for several weeks during the second half of the 2015 season and collected 738 usable responses.
In addition to questions that generated demographic profiles, the survey collected mixed method data which assessed the social media platforms fans used to engage with the team, the frequency in which this engagement occurred, and qualitative data explaining how this experience could be improved. The survey also included nine involvement items (Beaton, Funk, Ridinger, & Jordan, 2011; Doyle, Kunkel, & Funk, 2013) assessing the individual’s psychological connection to the team, which were used to segment the sample into the four stages proposed by Funk and James’ (2001) Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) - Awareness, Attraction, Attachment and Allegiance.
Segmentation results placed 33 people in Awareness, 87 people in Attraction, 255 people in Attachment and 366 into the Allegiance stage. This distribution confirmed the majority of the sample was highly engaged consumers. Preliminary results indicate that individuals in the higher PCM stages interact with the team across a broader spectrum of social media channels, view more types of content on these platforms and do so for longer periods than those in the lower stages. Interestingly, individuals in the Allegiance stage engaged with the team on social media significantly more than those in the Attachment stage. Qualitative analysis indicated that consumers across the stages perceived the team could improve their experience by augmenting the content posted (e.g., more insights from coaches, players and more competitions) and by establishing more online identities (e.g., Snapchat, Vine). Additionally, there were suggestions that more co-creational activities (e.g., polls, fan feedback) would help enhance the connection the between the consumer and the team (e.g., Uhrich, 2014).
The main outcome from this study will be an extension of an existing theoretical framework into the analysis of online consumers, who may not live in a geographic proximity to the team and also whose fandom to the team may be variable. In addition, this study helps to bridge the gap between studies on social media and the use of theories that will help information marketing practice. Additionally, this research provides implications for sport organizations who can augment their content, and online presence based on these findings to develop fans that display a greater range of behaviors which benefit sport organizations.