Change in the Sports Communication Paradigm between 1998 and 2018: Game with Another vs. Game Against Another

Abstract

This study analyzes sports reporting in the context of game/competition with or against another in the most widely read daily media over a 20-year period. The purpose of the study is to question whether the preposition "against" just in the description of sports events on contemporary news portals has to a significant extent supplanted the preposition "with" in the context of competition with another, or whether this phenomenon, and to what extent, was also present in the earlier, pre-digital period of sports communication. Using qualitative and quantitative scientific methods, the study analyzes a corpus of 5984 headlines of sports reports from the FIFA World Cups in 1998 and 2018. The research results show that there is a statistically significant difference in the use of attributions "against" and attributions "with" in the description of sports events in 1998 and 2018 and prove the change in the communication paradigm of sports.

DOI:10.5671/ca.48.1.3