The Turn and Tendency of International Sport Communication Research

This paper analyzed 773 journal articles, 3 231 monographs and proceedings published between 2010 and 2015in the sport communication studies field from around the world (China's mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan excluded) through methodologies of literature review, data statistics and logical analysis.It identified 5turns in international sport communication research in the first decade of the 21 st century, namely, from mostly media sport studies to holistic sport communication studies, from quantitative studies to multi-channel and multi-method studies, from classic communication studies paradigms to interdisciplinary studies paradigms of humanities and social science as a whole, from studies mainly on text-mediated communication to research on visual- mediated communication, from traditional media studies to new media studies.At the same time, this paper discovered 5tendencies in international sport communication research, English-centrism and Western sports domination, Western ideology domination, feminist themes domination, focus on sports stars and celebrities, emphasis on globalization, postmodernism and omnimedia context domination.On top of this, this paper aims to enable domestic researchers to have better understanding of international research hotspots, difficult and key areas while staying away from the problems.It also endeavors to propose potential directions for future research.