Jessica Birthisel | Nov. 18, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Doctoral student Jeff Cannon explained his "warrior, legend, icon" method of analyzing sports journalism. |
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Cannon said analysis of sports coverage should explore how sports stories impact collective memory, a term created by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs to refer to the constructed social memory shared and passed on by groups and societies.
The project is philosophical, as Cannon described it, and revolves around a question: To what preexisting knowledge does news of any kind address itself?
Journalism is the act of addressing and updating the shared understandings upon which we act as “peoples,” said Cannon. Memory, then, is not focused on truth.
“Memory cares not about truth,” he told his audience in the Ernie Pyle lounge. “Memory cares that [something] could possibly happen.”
Basing his work on neuroscientific descriptions of different types of memory, he said his model consists of three domains of memory applicable to sports stories: the warrior, the legend and the icon.
In the warrior domain, which focuses on implicit or procedural memory, an analysis should address rules as critical parts of sports, games and life.
“The rules of order and rules of battle are really, historically, where sport came from,” said Cannon, who says in this domain scholars can analyze conventions, beliefs, customs, superstitions and explanations, among others.
In the legend domain, which focuses on episodic memory or the sequencing of events and patterns in human experience, scholars can consider how sports reuses narratives of winning and losing and the idea of legend in order to establish plausibility or truth. This ties into the concept of collective memory. In this domain, said Cannon, scholars can try to find out how sports stories rely on what stories audiences already know about the material.
In the iconic domain, which focuses on semantic memory of concrete knowledge and facts, scholars can consider how athletes and companies become and remain icons.
“Icons are a key component of brand,” said Cannon, using as examples icons such as Tiger Woods and Nike’s swoosh.
But icons are mutable, he said, and they can fade away. Therefore the news media establish, refresh, modify and amplify icons.
During the question and answer period, associate professor Dave Boeyink asked about two particular sports stories and how Cannon’s model would apply. First is the day-after sports story, which Boeyink described as “the lifeblood of sports reporting.” He asked how another big sports story of the year, Armando Galarraga’s no-hitter that wasn’t, would fit into the model.
For the no-hitter story, Cannon said the drama surrounding it reinforces the romanticism people have toward sport and audience desire to create icons and legends. As for the day-after story, he said this was the exact type of story that inspired him to create a new methodology of analysis.
“There’s so much more going on in these stories than gets reported,” said Cannon, who said he hopes his model will help scholars better understand the social and cultural influences on sports audiences’ collective memory.
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