“The Only Thing I Am Guilty of Is Taking Too Many Jump Shots1”: A Deleuzian Media Analysis of Diana Taurasi’s Drug Charge in 2010

Abstract

In November 2010, the US media reported that basketball player Diana Taurasi tested positive for a banned substance while playing in Turkey. In this study, we explore the media coverage of Taurasi’s positive drug test from a Deleuzian perspective. We consider the media coverage as an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Malins, 2004) to analyze how Taurasi’s drug using body is articulated with the elite female sporting body in the coverage of her doping incident (Markula, 2004; Wise, 2011). Our analysis demonstrates that Taurasi’s position as a professional basketball player in the US dominated the discussion to legitimize her exoneration of banned substance use. In addition, Turkey, its “amateur” sport and poor drug control procedure, was located to the periphery to normalize a certain type of professionalism, doping control, and body as the desirable elements of sporting practice.

How Does the Negative Impact of an Athlete’s Reputational Crisis Spill Over to Endorsed and Competing Brands? The Moderating Effects of Consumer Knowledge

“…The news story described a fictional PED case. We chose a PED case because such stories often receive keen attention from the press (Bie & Billings, 2015; Hambrick et al, 2015; Osborne, Sherry, & Nicholson, 2016) and are commonly studied as an important issue (Denham, 2004; Liao & Markula, 2016). The basic tenet of the spillover effect is the impact transfers to associated objects even if the information is not presented in publicity (Ahluwalia et al, 2000).…”