Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1994

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Joan Paul

Committee Members

Andy Kozar, Joy DeSeni, John Finger

Abstract

This dissertation examined the sport hero of popular journalism, 1886-1920. Assuming the hero is a reflection of society, three questions served to guide this study. What were the values the news media espoused in its coverage of sport heroes during the age of mass industrialism? How do sport heroes reflect the values of the society as a whole? Are the values they espouse consistent with the assumptions of the time of what constituted a free and democratic society? These questions were answered by examining popular newspapers for the themes that emerged from their portrayal of the sport hero. These themes were then analyzed and tested in the context of the culture of the day to determine how they reflected the values of the society as a whole. The values that emerged were critically examined for consistency against traditional American values. As with the frontier hero, the sport hero was a model of excellence, an adventurer, strong and courageous, that symbolized power and masculinity. A growing consumer culture and the advent of a national media coalesced interest in the sport hero. Although sport was essentially an industrial phenomenon, much of its appeal was due to the fact that it touted the rural agrarian values of the frontier. During the era of mass industrialism, sport as an institution was promoted for its democratic virtue, however, spectator sports were primarily a racially segregated male middle class phenomenon which often alienated women, the poor, and a number of racial and ethnic minorities. In reality there was no democratic initiative in sport, but rather it merely reflected the inequities that existed within society as a whole. The values espoused by journalists in their portrayal of the sport hero reflect the contradictory nature of American society, and were often inconsistent with the assumptions of the time of what constituted a free and democratic society. Sport was conservative in its social values, and progressive in the sense that it quickly became part of the modern consumer culture of the twentieth century.

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