Framing the game through a sabermetric lens: Major League Baseball broadcasts and the delineation of traditional and new fact metrics

dc.contributorGriffin, Darrin J.
dc.contributorParrott, Scott
dc.contributorLeeper, James D.
dc.contributorBrown, Kenon A.
dc.contributor.advisorBillings, Andrew C.
dc.contributor.authorArth, Zachary William
dc.contributor.otherUniversity of Alabama Tuscaloosa
dc.date.accessioned2019-08-01T14:24:37Z
dc.date.available2019-08-01T14:24:37Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.descriptionElectronic Thesis or Dissertationen_US
dc.description.abstractThis purpose of this dissertation was to first understand how Major League Baseball teams are portraying and discussing statistics within their local broadcasts. From there, the goal was to ascertain how teams differed in their portrayals, with the specific dichotomy of interest being between teams heavy in advanced statistics and those heavy in traditional statistics. With advanced baseball statistics still far from being universally accepted among baseball fans, the driving question was whether or not fans that faced greater exposure to advanced statistics would also be more knowledgeable and accepting of them. Thus, based on the results of the content analysis, fans of four of the most advanced teams and four of the most traditional teams were accessed through MLB team subreddits and surveyed. Results initially indicated that there was no difference between fans of teams with advanced versus traditional broadcasts. However, there were clear differences in knowledge based on other factors, such as whether fans had a new school or old school orientation, whether they were high in Schwabism and/or mavenism, and how highly identified they were with the team. Post hoc analyses were conducted to account for two of the teams in the content analysis having disparities between graphics and commentary in their advanced or traditional nature. These analyses generally revealed the hypothesized pattern of higher knowledge for fans of teams with more advanced broadcasts. Implications for learning and unlearning are discussed as the results here show that heightened exposure, endorsements from trusted sources, and the old and new information being shown concurrently offer greater opportunities for learning and accepting lesser known information.en_US
dc.format.extent188 p.
dc.format.mediumelectronic
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.otheru0015_0000001_0003363
dc.identifier.otherArth_alatus_0004D_13827
dc.identifier.urihttp://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/6176
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Alabama Libraries
dc.relation.hasversionborn digital
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Electronic Theses and Dissertations
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections
dc.rightsAll rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.en_US
dc.subjectCommunication
dc.titleFraming the game through a sabermetric lens: Major League Baseball broadcasts and the delineation of traditional and new fact metricsen_US
dc.typethesis
dc.typetext
etdms.degree.departmentUniversity of Alabama. College of Communication and Information Sciences
etdms.degree.disciplineCommunication & Information Sciences
etdms.degree.grantorThe University of Alabama
etdms.degree.leveldoctoral
etdms.degree.namePh.D.

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