Australia

Research and scholarship addressing the Australian sports media has gradually become more intensive over the last three decades as the scale of its "media sports cultural complex" (Rowe, 2004) has become more evident. This body of work has tended not only to address media sport institutions and practices, but has contextualised them with regard to Australian political economy, cultural forms and habits, and power relations. Early work in Australian sports history, like Cashman and McKernan (1981), was followed by intellectual interventions from sport political history (such as Stoddart, 1986), sport sociology (including Lawrence & Rowe, 1986; McKay, 1991) and media, cultural and communication studies (such as Nicholson, 2007; Rowe, 2011 a). A key area of interest, given the heavy concentration of ownership and control in the Australian media, and the cultural influence of mediated sport, has been sports journalism (see, for example, Media International Australia, 2011).