In the past there have been a lot of controversies regarding whether or not colleges, schools and professional sports teams should carry on using team emblems of Native American mascots. This study was prompted by these controversies. The systematic investigation on how people discern and understand information from assorted sources and how the receivers of information create collective meaning is one of the vital contributions from the communication field.
The approach used in this study is based on an empirical research design. An empirical research is one that is based on monitoring and measurement of an actual occurrence that has been experienced rather than beliefs. This study was meant to look into whether there is a connection that can be shown between sports participation and greater acceptance of Native American sport mascots. According to Bresnahan & Flowers (2008), the theoretic framework of the study is; individuals that have more participation in sports are more prone to give messages concerning sports greater attention and they have more exposure to sport imagery.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
In this research, 167 people were involved; they included both men and women. These were all university undergraduates between the ages of 18 to 28. The majority of them were Caucasians and the least was 4 multi-racial people and 1 Native American. The participants were given questionnaire booklets. These booklets incorporated scales to quantify four variables of sport involvement, demography details and quantifying attitude towards the mascot. Additionally there was an open-ended item asking participants to list down characteristics that they think make the ideal sports mascot. There was an item that needed the participants to identify what teams the mascots belonged to, this was so that they could account for familiarity and non-familiarity. There was also a section that needed them to examine a picture of the mascot and share their attitudes towards them. They were four mascots, 3 being Native Americans and one being white (Bresnahan & Flowers, 2008). There was a similar spread of men to women across the four conditions and the minorities were similarly split
The results of the research did indeed show that participants who were more involved and attentive to sports were a lot more accepting of sports mascots. It was clear from the results that individuals with more sports involvement were a lot more accepting of Native American sport mascots compared with those who had little sports involvement (Bresnahan & Flowers, 2008). Another result was that there was a greater acceptance of the white mascot compared to the aggregated Native American sport mascot.
This study was done to find out if involvement in sports reduces the beliefs that Indian mascots are being depicted in a harmful way. Opponents of Native American mascots have brought about arguments that are based off cultural and personal violations but sadly did not have any empirical data to back this up. The results in this study have actual empirical results. These results back the theory that sports involvement does indeed show greater approval for Native Americans. According to Brenham & Flowers (2008), it is believed that people that are very involved in sports easily embrace these Native American symbols; these are symbols that are often depicted and have become a social normal for them. The issue is them being accepting of these symbolisms is based off of the escalated use of Indian mascots as symbols of sports involvement in almost three thousand school sports teams across America. Due to this, there is empirical evidence that shows measureable harm because the embracing of these symbols has been pushed by the mentioned factors.
Reference
Bresnahan, J.M & Flowers,K. (2008). The Effects of Involvement in Sports on Attitudes Toward Native American Sport Mascots . Howard Journal of Communications. P 166-167, 169-174.
