Tonight at 8 PM: Online seminar on “impact of social media on women’s sports”

My friend Megan Hueter from Women Talk Sports informed me that this evening at 8 PM EDT the University of Minnesota will host–and stream online–a panel discussion on the impact of social media on women’s sports.

The discussion, entitled “Facing Off Over Facebook: The Impact of Social Media on Women’s Sports,” features Penn State University Associate Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism Marie Hardin, Minneapolis Star Tribune sportswriter Rachel Blount and three-time US Olympic gold medalist hockey player Angela Ruggiero.

Here’s a description of the topic from the University of Minnesota website:

Over the past 30 years, scholars have documented numerous ways in which traditional sport media marginalize and sexualize female athletes. Into this vast—and influential— media landscape appears the recent and exponential explosion of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Will this technological paradigm shift challenge or reproduce the ways in which female athletes are traditionally portrayed in mainstream sport media? Will the unprecedented popularity of social media—and the alternative “ways of knowing” it provides to traditional media—fundamentally alter how we view women’s sports? Panelists with diverse experiences and perspectives will “face off” and take on these important and largely unexplored questions as we move into the Age of New Media.

Click here to watch a live stream of the discussion tonight on the University of Minnesota website. An archive of the broadcast will likely be available in a few days.