Guy Harrison

Dr. Harrison’s research investigates issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the electronic media industry through critical and cultural studies lenses. His scholarship to this point has focused on the treatment of women working in sportscasting. This work will culminate in his upcoming book, On the Sidelines: Gendered Neoliberalism and the American Female Sportscaster (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). On the Sidelines uses contemporary feminist theory to examine our culture’s assumptions of women sportscasters and the real-life consequences of those assumptions on women working in the industry. His work on this subject has been previously published in such academic journals as Feminist Media Studies and Critical Studies in Media Communication with other work featured in Social Media and Society and The Howard Journal of Communication. Dr. Harrison is currently exploring the experiences of Black women newscasters and is also launching a quantitative inquiry into sports fans’ electronic media consumption habits and preferences.

Before entering academia, he worked in sports information/collegiate athletics media relations at a pair of NCAA Division II institutions, serving first as a sports information assistant at Nova Southeastern University before becoming an assistant athletic director at Eckerd College. As an SID, Dr. Harrison was responsible for promoting his assigned varsity teams and athletes by writing game recaps and feature stories and maintaining team webpages and statistics. Dr. Harrison was also the play-by-play voice for many of the teams he covered, which included soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and softball.

Prior to joining the University of Tennessee, Dr. Harrison was an Assistant Professor of Telecommunication Studies at Youngstown State University for three years, where his teaching primarily focused on the business and practice of sports broadcasting. He currently serves on the executive boards of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the International Association for Communication and Sport.

Education

PhD, Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University
M.S., Business Leadership, Nova Southeastern University
B.A. Broadcast Communication, Barry University

Research Interests

Race and gender in (sports) media