Sociological, psychological and pedagogical aspects of sport

- fourth part -

" Part Three

The great sponsorship of this sport by the media is to be considered at the same time the cause and consequence of the passion for the game of football: we try to produce and then sponsor something we like and, once successful, the sponsorship multiplies, creating more knowledge in more individuals of what you are sponsoring. Therefore, as regards the strictly sporting field, if football is liked, it will often sponsor; this sponsorship, in turn, by touching other individuals, will create new interest, from which other sponsorship will be generated. But advertising can, like in the sports field as well as in many other areas, it not only brings people to know a certain product, but can also lead to change the opinion that one has of it: men can communicate with each other through two distinct types of language : verbal language and non-verbal language.

The first is the one that prevails in children aged three and over and in all individuals belonging to different age groups, the second is the only type of language possessed by the child under the age of 3 and which remains in all other individuals over the age only at the subconscious level. Advertising, in fact, implies a fundamentally verbal type of communication, at least as regards the explicit form of the message, however, in the appearance of this type of language, a subliminal message is often involved that can, in some way, bypass the cognitive abilities of the individual under consideration. By doing advertising, sponsorship of a product is able to influence the same opinion that one has of it. The sponsored product does not necessarily have to be something material, it can also be something abstract, such as sport (football). In truth, however, other aspects contribute to condition the outcome of the sale of a product, be it concrete or abstract. To understand how advertising works and what kind of effect it can have on the individual and on the country, it is necessary to understand how it works communication: the fundamental model of communication is based on the experiments conducted by the scholar Ivan Pavlov on dogs: he had observed that by associating, for a sufficiently extended period of time (although not continuous), to a stimulus capable of provoking a reflex response in a dog, another stimulus which, normally, presenting itself in isolation, has no effect, the second stimulus acquired the same ability as the first to provoke the reflex response. This is the conditioned reflex. Thus he developed the stimulus - response (S - R) theory. Applying the fundamental model S - R to communication, the following scheme was developed:

This communication model was considered reliable until the end of the 1940s. Subsequently there was an "evolution of this thought: it took a huge number of experiments to be able to understand that in fact, it was not enough to apply this type of communication to be sure of receiving, through the feedback, an answer (the purchase sponsored product). Studies have shown that people have the ability to filter or translate unnecessary or unwanted messages off the screen (Shultz, 1986). A new mass communication model was developed based on the research of communication experts such as Paul Lazarfeld, C. I. Hoveland, Wilbur Schramm and others:

According to this model, people had the ability to filter out all unwanted information, unwelcome to their minds once the advertisement reached its destination. There would then be the possibility that between each of the components (sender, message, medium, etc.) of the scheme shown above, a disturbance could be interposed: for example, a disturbance placed between the sender and the message could be an error in the exposition of the concept , or the language used may not be appropriate. This is the following model (the symbol SS indicates the disorder):

The disturbances and filters mentioned above, as regards the advertising message in sports, should be guaranteed by a good level of culture or, more specifically, by a "good education". It is "scientifically known as" the "training" of intellectual abilities through study, keeps the ability of intuition active, therefore it is not surprising when it is observed that people with a not particularly high cultural level allow themselves to be influenced much more. ease from the speeches of others and, in this case, from advertising. Those who do not maintain their intellectual abilities in "training" often run the risk of inhibiting the effect of filters for the elimination of unworthy information, therefore runs the risk of getting closer to sport, always considering in particular the advertising of the sporting event, understood not in an ethically correct way.

Continues "