Tag: Egil Trasti Rogstad

Bringing together leading esports experts from Europe, North America, and Australia, Anne Tjønndal’s edited collection Social Issues in Esports (Routledge) provides new sociological analyses that define and locate esports in social studies. Kalle Jonasson, who wrote about esports on idrottsforum.org already back in 2005, is highly appreciative of Tjønndal’s book, notwithstanding the fact that he would have liked to see a bit more of conceptual and philosophical thinking around the social issues surrounding esports.

Drawing upon a wide range of interdisciplinary resources, John Toner’s Wearable Technology in Elite Sport: A Critical Examination reveals how wearable devices are used to quantify athletic bodies in ways that have a number of undesirable consequences for the embodied subject. In a collective review, the research group on sport and society, RESPONSE at Nord University, finds much to commend Toner’s efforts, but the critical perspectives promised in the title was sorely and sadly missing, according to our reviewers.

Egil Trasti Rogstad will give a trial lecture and a public defense for the degree of Ph.D. in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Nord University. In his doctoral work, Rogstad focuses on female players, gender perspectives and gender equality in e-sports – competitive computer gaming. He is concerned with social inequality, diversity and gender perspectives in sport and in media presentations of sport.

In Esports Insights (Routledge), Emily Hayday, Holly Collison-Randall and Sarah Kelly outline the fundamental characteristics, features, and structures of the rapidly growing esports industry. Featuring international case studies in every chapter, the book offers an introduction for readers without any prior knowledge of esports. It is well received by our reviewer Egil Trasti Rogstad, whose PhD project concerns various aspect of electronic sports, and it gave him insight into new areas of esports.

Jimmy Sanderson’s Sport, Social Media, and Digital Technology: Sociological Approaches (Emerald Publications) brings together a collection of essays from leading global scholars to illustrate how sociological approaches are imperative to enhancing our understanding of sport and social media and digital technology. A collective of sport sociologists at Nord University, Norway has read the book as a book group, bringing many various experiences and perspectives into a rich review highlighting the book’s strong points as well as its weaknesses.

EJSS’ function is to enable an international discussion about current issues and to foster collaboration between researchers from all social scientific sub-disciplines. It’s published 4 times per year. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Imagining the nation through football: German national self-stereotypes before, during and after the 2016 UEFA championship by ichael Mutz, Markus Gerke & Henk Erik Meier.

In this feature article, Egil Trasti Rogstad summarizes his article in European Journal for Sport and Society, in which he presents a traditional narrative review of how the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity is used to understand gendered power inequalities in eSports in the research literature. The review reveals issues of male domination as well as online harassment and negotiations of gendered expectations, suggesting that eSports and traditional sports discursively link masculinity, athleticism, and competition very similarly.

This scholarly commentary by Egil Rogstad draws on existing eSports research literature and relevant news stories in a discussion of what virtual sports can contribute with during a time of crisis when traditional sports are at a standstill, and what challenges virtual sports will have to face in order to make the boost that it is currently experiencing during the pandemic more than just a temporary respite while traditional sporting activities and events are suspended.