Background - Combining the communication theory of resilience and ethnography of communication, this study explored how resilience was developed through participation in basketball and basketball culture.
Aims - The central inquiry of the study focused on how the communication processes of resilience were enacted by members of basketball culture to develop resilience in response to various adversities. The primary questions included: What are the key elements of basketball culture that are related to resilience? How are professional basketball players and coaches using basketball as a means for developing resilience?
Method - Using ethnographic methods and a lens of communication, in-depth interviews with 12 professional basketball players and coaches were used to collect data regarding basketball culture and the participants’ own experiences of resilience. The data were analyzed using ethnography of communication to identify key elements of basketball culture. Furthermore, the data were analyzed with a framework of the communication processes of resilience: crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, maintaining communication networks, putting alternative logics to work, and backgrounding negative feelings while foregrounding productive action.
Results - Findings show that basketball culture is highly influenced by masculine conceptions of stoicism that limit discourse regarding adversity; therefore, basketball players and coaches used the act of participating in basketball as an adaptive response to communicatively develop resilience. Basketball players and coaches used participation in basketball to enact the communication processes of resilience intrapersonally, bypassing the restrictive cultural norms of stoicism associated with basketball culture. In other words, participants used participation in the sport to develop resilience and communicate that resilience to themselves and to others.
Conclusion – This study highlights the role of culture in resilience development and how participation in sport can be a conduit for communicative development of resilience. While this study focused primarily on basketball and basketball culture, it is possible participation in other sports and meaningful endeavors plays a similar role for the development of resilience.