This article considers the complex nature of sporting celebrity and the role of media and public relations in the creation of both sports celebrity and the fan expectations associated with that celebrity. While public relations literature has traditionally considered PR as a promotion and communication tool, this article acknowledges that in the cultural and ideological world of sport, PR has a much more sophisticated role to play. In the event of either positive or negative media attention, a sporting celebrity is subjected to unprecedented scrutiny and the increasingly high expectations of fans. However, the expectations of fans are not based on the simple notion of hero worship and role models, and this exploratory study suggests that fans are capable of very complex reactions to the 1 behaviours and marketing personas of sporting celebrities. The use of PR in sport deserves close examination and the reactive spin doctoring techniques of the past should give way to the strategic integration of public relations and media planning in both the creation of the sporting celebrity, balancing the sport versus private sides of that celebrity, and the varying fan expectations associated with each. 2More than Just the Media: Considering the role of public relations in the creation of sporting celebrity and the management of fan expectations.

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A community structure analysis compared cross-national coverage of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with variations in national-level demographics from 19 newspapers worldwide, yielding combined article “prominence” and “direction” “Media Vector” newspaper scores emphasizing either “favorable” (42%) or “unfavorable” (58%) coverage of GMOs. Regression analysis revealed “poverty level” (24.2% of variance) and “percent of agricultural land” (4.7%) totaled 28.9% of the variance, confirming that “vulnerability” indicators are associated with favorable media coverage of GMOs. Contrary to conventional “guard dog” assumptions that media mirror elite interests, systematic research on demographics and GMO coverage reveals that media can mirror the interests of society’s most “vulnerable.”

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Antidepressant medications have been the fastest growing category of use of pharmaceutical products over the past decade. Selected Internet web sites providing information on antidepressant medications were identified and assessed using code of conduct criteria for posting health information on the Internet as developed by the Health on the Internet Foundation. Thirteen representative web sites were evaluated. Degree of compliance with each of the eight criterion varied by site, though all 13 sites met the criterion for legality of content and conduct on their web site. WebMD and FamilyDoctor.org met most of the criteria, while pharmaceutical company sites tended to meet the fewest criteria.