ACADEMICS | A journal founded and edited by a Loyola Marymount University professor won a 2018 PROSE award for “Best New Journal in Social Sciences” from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
Communication & Sport, founded and edited by Lawrence Wenner, Von der Ahe Chair in Communication and Ethics in the College of Communication and Fine Arts and the School of Film and Television, is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly journal that “publishes research to foster international scholarly understanding of the nexus of communication and sport,” according to SAGE Publishing’s website, the publisher of the journal in partnership with the International Association for Communication and Sport.
“Starting a new scholarly journal is a challenging endeavor in the digital age,” Wenner said. “With the support of SAGE Publishing and a remarkably distinguished senior editorial team and editorial board that represents the leading scholars in communication and sport from around the globe, we’ve had the good fortune of attracting some of the strongest research in this clearly impactful area.”
Wenner’s own research includes nine books and approximately 130 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. He has lectured in more than 30 countries on research focusing on critical assessments of media content, ethical dimensions of race and gender portrayals in advertising, audience experiences with television in the family context, and the values and consumption of mediated sports.
“Communication in and about sport is increasingly pervasive, from the coverage of the Olympic Games to the Super Bowl to how the coach of a youth team relates to your child,” Wenner said. “We’re pleased to be able to shed light on a host of issues that have made sport such an influential social and cultural force, something that, of course, would not be possible without communication and the now almost endless media coverage. This is a special day for our community of scholars whose work has helped make a case for the standing of the communication and sport nexus in the social sciences.”
The inaugural issue of Communication & Sport appeared in spring 2013. In that issue Wenner wrote, “This journal hits the scene as research on sports media and communication continues to explode across a variety of disciplines.”
Since then, Communication & Sport has been included in several prestigious subject databases, including Scopus, accepted in 2016, and the Clarivate Analytics suite of services. Abstracting and indexing of the journal’s articles are in the Social Sciences Citation Index®, the Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition (Impact Factor pending), and the Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences products.
Along with the growth of the journal in 2017 from a quarterly publication to publishing six issues – 768 annual pages – each year, Wenner and the publishers are optimistic that these recent achievements will continue to make Communication & Sport a premier outlet at the interdisciplinary nexus of two important and complementary areas.
