The role of public relations, media, and communication in sports: A case study of Al-Haddaf newspaper

Abstract

Sport has become an influential social reality in most contemporary societies, a representative face of national culture in international forums, and a measure of excellence and development in all fields. Sport has entered areas that neither economic, military, nor political power has been able to access, such as bringing together adversaries and enemies and calming tensions in some conflict zones, as happened between the two Koreas when they entered the Olympic Games under one flag. Due to its value, sport now boasts international institutions, national federations, training schools, and universities. At the competitive level, it has reached a high degree of professionalism, whether in the field, management, advertising, the language of commerce, tournament organization, or in terms of the funds spent on players and the development of training methods. Sport has also received significant media attention, whether visual, audio, or print, to cover various competitions, especially football. In our country, sport receives the same level of attention. As for its relationship with the media here, it has gone through two phases: the first, before the transition to a market economy, when the media was controlled; and the second, the transition to professionalism, where sports media has attempted to... Keeping pace, especially with print media, with the emergence of new weekly and daily sports newspapers. However, the transition of sports in our country to professionalism has not been without problems and is still in its transitional phase. The same can be said for sports media. We are not accusing it here, but due to certain circumstances, it has contributed negatively in one way or another to Algerian sports, influenced by some circumstances, the need to spread and fill the void in any way, the lack of qualified human resources in this field at that time, or the interference of politics, businessmen, commercial competition, and other circumstances. The language of the media observed in our sports media is not helpful for the development of sports and fair competition. Newspapers have become a vessel for disputes, sports problems, bidding wars, and quarrels with words that only contribute to mediocrity and division. This is what we are trying to show in this research entitled: The Contribution of Media and Public Relations to Algerian Sports.