Date of Award

1-1-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Nobuya Inagaki

Abstract

In the previous two decades, professional sports franchise owners secured nearly $20 billion in taxpayer paid subsidies for new stadiums, domes, and arenas. In the geographic area of study, Atlanta Georgia, two public-financed stadium debates occurred between 2012 and 2014. The following study examined sports franchise owners, politicians, and civic and business groups’ use of the mass media to communicate their public messages during the stadium approval process, as well as how the local mass media frames stadium subsidy debates through Agenda Setting and Framing theories. The textual analysis study used a sample of 10 Atlanta Journal-Constitution online newspaper articles per franchise stadium debate. Three categories of coding were chosen as a way to classify the content. The first category of the study was to determine if the content was pro-stadium subsidy; second, if the artifact was non-biased stadium subsidy; and last, if the artifact was negative, or against the stadium subsidy. The study results found that the majority of the text samples trended toward negative or neutral themes. The Atlanta Braves sample contained 20% text coded as positive themes and the Atlanta Falcons sample contained 30%. The research found that despite the low numbers of positive themes within the samples, evidence from the study points to franchise owners, politicians, and civic and business groups having influence in the mass media. As evidenced by the study’s findings that individuals with a vested interest in new stadium construction had the ability to frequently have their viewpoints, visual samples, and secondary sources quoted within the Atlanta Journal-Constitution samples.

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