SPORTS COMMUNICATION IN THE SPANISH BACHELOR'S DEGREES IN JOURNALISM CURRICULUM

In the past, sports journalism was regarded by universities as a "soft" specialisation. The picture began to change at the end of the 20th century, when schools were incorporating it into their programs. Nowadays, it's one of the most popular specializations among journalism students, who demand specific training in this field. This paper investigates the status of sports communication pedagogy at universities in Spain. For this purpose, an exploratory research is conducted to describe the presence of sport as an object of study in the teaching plans of the journalism degrees. The method used is content analysis. 38 curricula and 1748 syllabi of their courses are examined. Findings show that 58% of the universities offer a stand-alone course on sports communication, while 24% address the subject as part of a specialist journalism course. Other courses not related to sports journalism or specialist journalism (mainly those focused on radio, photojournalism, media law, press and television) also include sports in their syllabi in a shorter form. For 11% of universities, the latter is the only way in which the subject is addressed, and in one case an institution does not include any reference to sport. Therefore, most of Journalism degrees in Spain cover, to a greater or lesser extent, the demand for training in sports communication, although data indicates that this discipline is not yet fully established and that there is room for improvement.