Dear all,
This newsletter marks the end of 2025 as far as the publication of original texts on idrottsforum.org is concerned. During the next few weeks, until the start of the Spring term, only news item will be published, including news of new journal issues.
This newsletter marks the end of 2025 as far as the publication of original texts on idrottsforum.org is concerned. During the next few weeks, until the start of the Spring term, only news item will be published, including news of new journal issues.During 2025 we managed to publish 15 research articles, of which eight were peer reviewed and published in Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum; we also published 14 feature articles, and no less than 102 book reviews, plus 179 news items and 154 new journal issue presentations. We’re content with that, and we hope you are too.
Last week the following items were published on idrottsforum.org (see below; language and publication dates, YYMMDD, in brackets). Click on the red headings to go to content. Utilize the Google Translate service to turn Scandinavian language pages into (some sort of) English.
And remember, if you’re not already hooked up to one of the social media outlets that we utilize, for now they are Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn and X, you’re missing quite a lot of information from idrottsforum.org that never appears on the website. So, if that is the case, check out, by clicking on the names, our Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn and X accounts.
Thanks for being with us during 2025, and contributed to a record number of page views, 222,496 with a week left of the year. We hope you’ll keep us in your sight through 2026 as well.
We wish you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Kjell Eriksson
Editor
Book Review
New book looks for sport sociology in sport journalism
The sport-media relationship is a long-standing and symbiotic one. Sport delivers key audiences while media coverage fosters sport’s popularity and development. Rosarita Cuccoli’s new book Sports Journalism in Society (Bologna University Press) is about the media’s role and responsibility in selecting what becomes news when covering sport. Nicholas R. Buzzelli, well versed in sport media studies, concludes that Cuccoli offers journalists and journalism scholars a framework for deciding how sports journalism and sport sociology should further intersect moving forward. (Review in English, published 251216.)
The multiple and coexisting lives of sports journalism
To offer a comprehensive overview of the current and perceived future state of sports journalism competition, Nicholas Buzzelli’s latest offer, Normalizing the Sports Journalism Niche: Coexisting in a Modern News Landscape (Peter Lang) examines how various disseminators of written sports information are able to coexist in the modern sports journalism ecosystem by catering to the niche. Rosarita Cuccoli finds that the book provides valuable insights into the evolving nature of sports journalism as viewed by people from different subsets of sportswriting. (Review in English, published 251216.)
Michael Jordan: A Hero with a Thousand Faces
In The Myth of Michael Jordan in Popular Culture (Routledge), Tomasz Jacheć examines the life and career of Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports, asking how he transcended his sport to become a canonical myth in popular culture. In his review, Brian Hillman notes that the author uses the framework of the “hero’s journey” from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and makes good use of the “mytheme” concept. Our reviewer concludes that Jacheć’s effort is an exemplary academic engagement with popular culture. (Review in English, published 251217.)
An important contribution exploring how colonization, globalization, and national politics intersect with issues of identity in martial arts
The anthology Martial Arts in Latin Societies, edited by Augusto Rembrandt Rodríguez-Sánchez, Joaquín Piedra and George Jennings (Routledge), is the first book to explore martial arts and combat sports in Latin societies. We asked martial arts expert Anna Kavoura for a review, and her thorough reading and critical analysis is a clever companion to this sprawling collection of martial arts practices and national and cultural contexts within the Latin societies and the Philippines. Not without its flaws this is still an insightful and timely addition to the expanding body of martial arts scholarship. (Review in English, published 251217.)
News items (calls for papers, vacancies, etc.)
- Stipendiat innen idrettshistorie (barneidrettens historie) til Norges idrettshøgskole. Søknadsfrist 25. januar 2026 (251217)
