Sports Journalists as Agents of Change: An International Academic Perspective

Abstract

Sports journalists can act as agents of change in society since they have a unique and powerful platform to influence public opinion, raise awareness, advocate for various issues through their reporting and commentary, and overall promote positive change in society. This is perhaps more obvious when looking at recent research from the Nordic countries. However, are sports journalists able to be, and do they even wish to be, agents of change in countries such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Germany, and Israel? Based on academic writing and interviews with media and sports scholars, this article examines the academic discourse that tries to assess to what extent sports journalism may be professionalized in a select number of countries in the European Union and the Middle East. Respondents were asked to speak about how they, as academics, perceived the extent to which sports journalists in each country have substantial autonomy from the economic and political systems and to what extent they are agents of change in their country.