Introduction
Abstract
This special issue deals with a range of sporting activities and discourses and discusses structural evolutions in media - specifically how these evolutions have influenced the development of sports as practice and spectacle. Moreover, these articles consider how different forms of media have contributed to the construction of identities of sportswomen and sportsmen in France and the Francophone world, and also how media representations of sport and sporting icons have contributed to and been influenced by wider debates about (national) identity and ideas of community. This collection will analyse local, national and transnational contexts in which relations between sports media and identity have evolved, and are still evolving, in France and the Francophone world.