Volume 13, Issue 1 - Schwerpunktheft: Krisen des Sports / Special Issue: Crises of Sports

The present paper explores the social media strategies used by athletes and sport organizations for their communication about crisis situations in sports. Based on Coombs' Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT, 1995; 2010), which recommends specific response strategies to differing crisis types, we qualitatively analyzed Facebook posts and tweets/retweets by players and football associations in two crises that took place during the 2014 FIFA World Cup (Spain's elimination in the first round; the ‘Suárez bite’). The results indicate that the opportunities offered by social media are utilized either insufficiently or not at all. In both cases, there was no immediate crisis communication. In the Spain crisis, those involved overestimated the degree to which the public would assign responsibility to specific actors and the extent of reputational damage that would result. In the second case, in contrast, an individual's misconduct was underestimated despite the existing crisis history.

Typically, conceptualizations of social problems emerge following recurring social patterns, usually guided by specific values and interests. This also holds for the discussions surrounding a “lack of exercise” in young people and their “sedentary lifestyle”, and of the health problems that are expected to result from this. In the present paper, we examine interpretations of this problem that have dominated the public discussion and how they are reinforced and stabilized. Furthermore, we look at which actors have helped to establish these interpretations, focusing in particular on the interest-driven role of researchers as a result of the increasing dependence of universities on external funding. Additionally, we show how the assumptions of crises and deficits in young people function in legitimizing specific lines of argumentation in (physical) education.

Sexualized violence is one of the long-standing taboos in our society. In this article, recently reported cases of sexualized violence in pedagogical institutions serve as the starting point for an inquiry into what is known so far about sexualized violence in sports, and into the structures and procedures within sports organizations that might foster sexualized violence and encourage its concealment. To answer these question, the current state of research on sexualized violence in sports and pedagogical institutions is discussed, and a case study is reconstructed and analyzed on the basis of qualitative research.