Abstract
Australian cultural attitudes toward sports related concussion (SRC) are understudied. Australia has a long history of valorising combat, collision, and contact sports, in which SRC is a common occurrence. It is therefore vital to understand how sociocultural and historical factors shape Australian attitudes toward SRC, in order to more critically evaluate the decisions made by athletes, parents, coaches, and others with regards to risk and brain injury in sport. This paper analyzed historical representations of SRC in Australian sporting newspapers between 1803 and 1954. Using distant reading, this analysis revealed four distinct periods of increased press discourse about “concussion,” which were subject to interrogation via close reading. Close reading revealed that concussion was being reported in the Australian sporting press as early as 1859. Further analysis revealed critical and scientifically informed discussions about the delayed effects of concussion in 1901, systemic critiques of sporting organizations' response to concussion in 1906, and evidence of a limited concussion crisis in Australian boxing during the early 1930s. The findings of this research show that concussion was not only being reported in Australian newspapers throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but it was subject to critical and informed commentary that has striking similarities with current debates about SRC. Despite this, widespread systematic changes to Australian sport did not occur until recently. This raises important questions about the political and institutional factors that prevented a major concussion crisis from developing in Australia during the early twentieth century, and prompts us to further consider the distinguishing features that facilitated the development of the current crisis.
Highlights
On the evening of October 24, 2020, I was in a crowded pub in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia1
The articles published during these periods were scientifically well-informed, critical of the systemic and institutional issues underpinning the exposure to sports related concussion (SRC), and called for changes to the conduct of Australian sports
In the early 1900s, the death of boxer Otto Cribb generated significant press interest in the delayed effects of concussion and reporting on the subsequent trial showed that the Australian sporting press in 1901 possessed a sophisticated understanding of SRC pathology
Summary
On the evening of October 24, 2020, I was in a crowded pub in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia. By combining distant and close reading methodologies, this study produces a series of vignettes that reveal changes to Australian newspaper representations of SRC over time The sources for this analysis were provided by Trove, an online multimedia archive administered by the National Library of Australia (NLA). The 1930s peak may seem more visually striking because it is contrasted with a sharp decrease in “concussion” mentions during the decade, which was likely to be exacerbated by a dramatic decline in the number of sporting newspapers being published during and following the Second World War (Willmot, 1994) These epistemological and rhetorical factors are significant but they do not diminish the utility of distant reading in historical research. These few references indicate that a limited number of Australian sports journalists in 1859 recognized that brain injuries could have serious health consequences for athletes
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