2024 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 137-151
The purpose of this study is to harness the viewpoint of Takehiko Daikoku's virtual society theory, which clarifies the concepts of reality and virtuality in the modern media paradigm, to consider the position of reality in media sports.
According to the perspective of virtual society theory, contemporary reality is organized in the following way. Reality consists of reality in the physical arena and actuality in the social arena. The former is composed of presence, and the latter is composed of experiential reality and informational reality. Of these, the former, experiential reality, is backed up by verifiability, whereas the latter, informational reality, is backed up by the reliability of mass media and Technology. Concerning communication, in the sense that society is comprised of communication, communication possesses reality. However, different tones of reality exist for different kinds of communication.
For example, E-sports lack the reality of athletes, but communication occurring through this has realism in the sense that it has actuality. However, this has a tone that is different from an actual soccer match. Additionally, media sports like marathons in which the overall situation can only be viewed in its totality through television broadcasting inverts the relationship of original = real and copy = virtual, and VAR (Video Assistant Referee) and the Hawk-Eye System create a society in which reality is measured based on informational reality instead of experiential reality. As seen in these examples, reality is not in the process of disappearing in media sports, but instead in the process of changing.
