A critical examination of the production of meaning in the contemporary English language cycling media
Note: This is a recreation of the 2007-published Cycles of Representation, based on unfinished files on floppy disks (remember those?). It differs from the published version you may have read, and from the version available in archives.
CONCLUSION
The essay has analysed the ways in which the English language cycling media has adapted to technological, economic and communicative advancements to develop a unique postmodern method of production across the three key aspects of its media, while maintaining a symbiotic relationship. Because fans cannot easily follow the itinerant nature of professional road cycling in person, this mediation becomes vital, leading to a reliance on the printed word, live or edited coverage, or the new media’s instant news services. The postmodern reconstruction of traditional techniques serves to benefit the formation of narratives. This is particularly true in the print media, which, having come under threat first from the broadcast media weakening the imaginary dimension of cycle sport in the 1960s and 1970s (Maso, 2005:97; Wille, 2003:142) and then by the new media constructing a more easily accessible form of the written word in the 2000s, increasingly provides a narrativisation of the entire sport itself, its participants and its history rather than simply translating races into narrative events. Television itself has developed its own practices by appropriating the literal techniques of the traditional print media, something that it continues to do, and the contemporary English language broadcast media frequently serves as a means through which to disseminate and escalate specific discourses regarding the sport’s narrativisation, particularly through the use of the commentator, whose role is at least as much about providing discussion and context as it is about describing a sequence of events. In terms of physical coverage, the televised media, with its multiple cameras providing the viewer with an inimitable position through which to consume the race, offers a perspective of the cycling event that simply cannot be experienced in any other way (Wille, 2003:133). Similarly, the internet serves as a system through which both print and televised media are reconstituted, developing a distanced, globalised version of both. The success of its instantly accessible news and coverage is its compensation for the sacrifices of character it has to make to provide this service, and yet nevertheless it has to be balanced with an archive of previous reporting and broadcasts that is available on demand to its audience. As new media technologies become increasingly accessible, this postmodern system of production will continue to reinvent itself. Crucially, the texts produced under this shifting system do not just report on the sport; they actively construct its representation.
This representation is exemplified by the transnational identity produced to situate coverage from a particular viewpoint. The construction of an encompassing Anglo-Saxon identity to be defined by the way in which it interacts with continental European culture not only provides a basis for nationalistic fan support, but also posits cycle sport within racialised terms, situating events in a cultural, social and historical context that has reach far beyond sport. This is further evident in the way that the English language cycling media uses otherness. By Orientalising cycling fans that live beyond their sphere of influence and tagging the foreign cycling media as deviant and untrustworthy, a degree of visibility is attached to groups of people who exist outside of Anglo-Saxon culture. The media creates a further system of reference through the emphasis it places on the sport’s heritage. By referring to its history using the terms of a literary epic and consistently positioning contemporary events in relation to this, the grandeur of the sport is expressed and the perception of contemporary cycle racing as being a growing part of this illustrious history is created. Thus, “the sports establishment does not operate as an apolitical, asocial enterprise, but as part of the larger society. As such, sports are not an alternative to ‘real life,’ but a reflection of the racist economic and social system that supports them (Majors, 1990:113).” Cycling’s position as a niche sport in the countries represented by the media analysed in this essay might challenge this statement, but nevertheless the English language cycling media is not to be understood as simply a model based around reflection of a sequence of events, but instead an active site for the construction of meaning.
Further Study
It is important to understand that this text is an examination of the English language cycling media and makes no allusions as to the extent to which the meanings constructed by this media can influence its audience. The example of riders from Anglophone countries whose fame and level of coverage extends much beyond their talent demonstrates clearly that the media does not simply reflect public interest, but also influences it – that the American Tom Danielson can be regularly touted by fans as a favourite for the Grand Tours, cycling’s most demanding and prestigious races, despite scarce evidence of his ability to perform to a competitive level in such events beyond the media’s influence, should be considered an example of this phenomenon. However, whilst it is certain that the media affects the ways in which people consume and understand cycle sport, there are examples that suggest the influence is not simply a top-down model – people are capable of constructing their own readings of texts. The example of public disdain for doping stories and the continued audience figures for races presented as being devalued by doping issues (Maso, 2005:141; a resilience reflected in the record-breaking television audiences of the late 1990s and early 2000s) demonstrates that not only are the sport’s fans resistant to the dictation of values, but also that the cycling media can be out of touch with the audience whose interests it claims to represent. Considering audience reception of these media texts would thus be both interesting and useful in developing an understanding of the effects of cycling media texts. Qualitative and quantitative audience studies would provide an ethnographic aspect to further studies into this subject, and would highlight the extent to which these representations are received and whether they are reproduced in the perceptions and behavioural practices of fans within and outside of representations of cycle sport.