About David Cassilo, Ph.D. : David Cassilo is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM). Dr. Cassilo’s research focuses on sports media and its framing of the physical and mental health of athletes, with critical attention to the role race and gender play in these contexts. Dr. Cassilo’s publications appear in notable journals such as Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Communication & Sport, Journal of Sports Media, and the Howard Journal of Communications.
In 2022, his contributions to sports communication research were honored with the Lawrence Wenner Emerging Scholar Award from the Communication and Sport Division of the National Communication Association, which also awarded a Top Overall Paper Award to his co-authored article, “Social Media Discourse about Division-I Football Players’ Announcements of Early Exit: The Role of Expressed Fandom,” in 2019. Prior to joining UDM’s faculty, Dr. Cassilo worked as a writer and researcher for Spring Health and was an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University. He also served as an Adjunct Professor at The University of Akron and The University of Olivet.
In addition to his academic experience, Dr. Cassilo has a background in digital sports journalism, having reported for USA Today, Popular Science, and Men’s Health, among many other organizations. He brings this expertise to his service as Advisor for The Varsity News at UDM. Dr. Cassilo earned his Ph.D. in Communication and Information from Kent State University, his M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, and his B.A. in Communication from Villanova University.
Interview Questions
[MastersinCommunications.com] May we begin with an overview of your academic and professional background? How did you become interested in sports communication and its connections with health communication, and come to focus your scholarship on digital journalism and media discourses surrounding the mental and physical health of athletes?
[Dr. David Cassilo] I was a sports reporter before I got into academia, and I continued to work in that capacity when I became an adjunct professor at The University of Akron. I really enjoyed that opportunity to be in the classroom. It made it clear to me that I wanted to teach, so I decided to make that transition. I went back to school and received my Ph.D. from Kent State University. I started doing research right away when I arrived there, and it was a natural fit. I was used to writing a lot because I was a journalist, and I found I had a natural affinity for qualitative methods because of my experience conducting interviews.
Research was a way for me to explore things that I had seen while working as a sports journalist that I did not have the capacity or leeway to explore in depth at the time. For example, I covered football. When players sustained concussions and other head injuries, we would cover it. On a few occasions, we even conducted investigative reporting on the issue. At the same time, I felt the way that the media covered head injuries, concussions, and CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease linked to head trauma] in the NFL was problematic. My research began with investigating that discourse and how it had shifted over time.
As I started to gain more understanding of the field, I remained focused primarily on health issues, but I started to explore their connections to issues of gender and race. Further, while most of my expertise was in communication about head injuries within sport, I began to notice a trend where mental health was being discussed in sport more frequently. I thought this was important, so I began conducting research on this issue. Initially my work in this area focused on professional sports, but I have become increasingly interested in the mental health of collegiate and high school athletes.
[MastersinCommunications.com] One key area of your research attends to media framings of athlete mental health, which you have published on extensively. For our readers who might be less familiar with media framing, could you introduce us to this concept and highlight some of the frames you see as most consequential in contemporary media discourses on athlete mental health?
[Dr. David Cassilo] Media framing describes the way that the values of media organizations are often a reflection of the values of society. As such, whether intentionally or unintentionally, these values impact the way that media represents the issues it covers. For example, if you are covering an issue like mental health, the things that you view as important can influence how you structure that article or what aspects of that news story you focus on. When that happens over time and with consistency across media organizations, then the information that is disseminated to the public about mental health and sport tends to take on familiar themes that we call “frames.”
As the public, we get the majority of our information through news and other forms of media. How the media talks about things influences how we understand those topics, whether that is health, sport, race, or gender. This is why it is important to me to understand how athlete mental health is covered in sports media. This is a subject that has been infrequently examined in scholarship, because it is only relatively recently that mental health has been widely discussed in the media. It was not until the 2010s that mental health began to be covered more prominently because of the contributions athletes like Royce White, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, and Michael Phelps have made to making this a more open and honest conversation.
In my own research, I have specifically examined the cases of Royce White and DeMar DeRozan. For those who might not know, Royce White was an NBA player who had an anxiety disorder and severe fear of flying. When he was drafted as a rookie in 2012, it involved a more complex negotiation with the team than most other rookies because he wanted accommodations allowing him not to fly on team planes, among other matters. This received a great deal of media coverage, which often employed critical frames that essentially argued White should have handled the process differently.
DeMar DeRozan is an NBA player who publicly discussed his experiences with depression in 2018 and has been a vocal advocate for destigmatizing mental health and supporting athlete mental health since. In contrast to White, nearly all of the frames that appeared in media coverage of DeRozan were positive and supportive. There were some positive framings of the White story, but the support afforded to DeRozan was nearly universal. The distinction between how these two players were discussed reflects a significant evolution in how the media frames mental health over that six-year period between 2012 and 2018. Both were NBA players. Both were Black athletes. Yet, over just a few years’ time, they were framed very differently for speaking publicly about their experiences. This shift holds true today, as media representations of athlete mental health are generally supportive and rarely deploy critical frames.
I have also examined how framing takes place in student athlete handbooks. I wanted to see how universities framed athlete mental health in the descriptions that these handbooks provided of the support services offered to students. In many of these documents, the framing was supportive, often encouraging athletes to attend to their mental health. At the same time, the importance of that support was framed through their athletic performance. It was important for them to receive help and treatment for their mental health struggles because doing so would impact their performance and competitive success. As such, this framing defined them more as athletes than as people.
Overall, I think athlete mental health is an issue that is finding its place in the media, but these frames are still evolving and continue to have important limits.
[MastersinCommunications.com] Another focus of your scholarship has been on physical sports injuries and player safety, with concussions and head injuries in the NFL being one major concern of this work. Drawing on your recent publication, “Shifting the Coverage: Understanding Why Reporting and Attitudes Changed About the NFL and Player Safety,” would you discuss how the representation of physical health and injury has evolved in sports media? What are some of the enduring problems faced by sports journalists in attempting to accurately and ethically cover player injuries?
[Dr. David Cassilo] For a long period of time, the glorification of playing through injury was a common theme across different forms of media representing the NFL, including newspapers, film and television, and digital media. There was a dominant narrative that part of being a professional athlete was the ability to perform through pain and gut out injuries. The tougher the players were, the better, and being tough meant sacrificing your body.
This was largely the narrative until research emerged from Boston University related to head injuries, concussions, and CTE in athletes in 2009, followed by a 2015 study specific to NFL players. During this period, the broadcast of the PBS Frontline documentary League of Denial: The NFL’S Concussion Crisis fueled this discussion, and former players began to file lawsuits. In response, the NFL, which had previously dismissed the claim that concussions might have long-term impacts on players as junk science, had to face those findings more directly. I also think that this moment moved many journalists to realize the role that they played in that process by not more deeply investigating the issue and being more critical of the league in their coverage.
There has been a 180-degree turn toward valuing player safety in more recent media, and coverage is no longer critical of athletes who cut their careers short to preserve their safety. Some of my more recent research has focused on the difficulties the NFL has faced as it makes rule changes and shifts to emphasize the importance of player safety in its communication. The league is currently struggling to overcome credibility concerns stemming from its handling of CTE, which have contributed to a perception among many NFL players that the league and their teams only view them as a means to make money.
In an interview study I did with former players about this topic, I found that they were very reluctant to believe what the NFL was saying. They were very apprehensive. They believed that they were still going to get hurt in the long run, either physically, mentally, or financially. For example, in 2024 the NFL began promoting a “Guardian Cap” model of helmet to help reduce injuries, but the league’s credibility was damaged to the point that many players did not trust these helmets would actually make them safer.
The harm caused by the league’s handling of CTE has created trust issues that still exist today. I have a new research project that explores media coverage and social media reaction to the Guardian Cap policies more closely, in order to examine whether this skepticism about the NFL’s safety initiatives extends to public perceptions of these policies.
[MastersinCommunications.com] You have also investigated how athletes with concussion injuries use online forums to navigate experiences of loss, grief, and isolation, and to pursue social support. Would you tell us a bit about what this research reveals about the profound consequences sports injuries can have for athletes and developing resources to support them?
[Dr. David Cassilo] This research is grounded in data I gathered from online public forums for those who have experienced a concussion. Many of the users of these forums were high school athletes. I was interested in how they benefited from sharing their stories and being in a connected network.
The data for this research is from the early 2010s, when concussions were not as commonly discussed. You would not necessarily know the symptoms and potential impacts of a concussion unless you had been through the experience of having one. A head injury sounds serious, but the ramifications of having a concussion are more than physical. You may be light sensitive and nauseous. You may feel unable to go out in public.
When you sustain a concussion, the steps to recovery often include isolation. For student athletes, this means you cannot go to school, practice with the team, or play in games. Sometimes, it means they cannot play the sport anymore entirely — a sport that, often, has been a big part of their life since they were very young. Concussions, then, have impacts on the physical health of players, as well as on their identities and their emotional well-being. Online support forums can be very helpful to reducing that sense of isolation. They allow people to share similar experiences and to observe how others work to overcome the obstacles they contend with.
I have not conducted follow-up research on this issue recently, but my work at the time indicated that there was great potential for these forums. They may also be especially helpful for those players who never saw a financial reward for their athletic careers. Professional athletes often earn millions of dollars. This does not negate the negative impact that concussions have on their lives, but it does mean they can often afford more care. High school and college athletes who never got to play professionally might not have access to the same resources, which makes online spaces like this uniquely valuable.
[MastersinCommunications.com] You have published several pieces on the political activism of professional athletes, including “Flag on the Play: Colin Kaepernick and the Protest Paradigm” and “Athletes and/or Activists: LeBron James and Black Lives Matter.” Would you tell us a bit about the “protest paradigm” and the tensions that athletes navigate when attempting to advocate for racial and social justice?
[Dr. David Cassilo] Some historical context is helpful here. Especially during the 1990s and early 2000s, athlete activism and protest was more rare, though it did exist. In prior decades, athletes like Muhammad Ali staked their careers on their beliefs. At the same time, financial concerns related to branding largely disincentivized activism. Athletes generally did not comment on social issues.
Then, in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement emerged and inspired many professional athletes to express their social and political beliefs. In 2016, as a protest against police brutality, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to kneel during the performance of the U.S. national anthem that occurs prior to games. His initial protest during a preseason game did not receive much attention, but when he continued to kneel and people did notice, Kaepernick became a lightning rod for controversy.
This is an interesting moment because, while over the last decade sports leagues in the United States have embraced social justice and the struggle for racial equality, media coverage at the time was highly critical of Kaepernick and framed his actions as a protest of the United States rather than police brutality. This created a great deal of public confusion about what Kaepernick was actually protesting and mischaracterized his protest as anti-American.
I do not think it is a coincidence the surge in athlete activism we see during this period corresponds with the rise of social media platforms. While Kaepernick engaged in a more traditional style of protest, social media provides a platform for athletes to directly communicate their political viewpoints. They do not have to protest at a game or a press conference. They can share content, links, and hashtags to advocate for causes they believe in outside of league channels. This affords a unique opportunity for athletes to control their own narratives. If they feel strongly about an issue, they no longer have to go through PR or talk to reporters. They can get on social media and put it out there.
LeBron James is probably the most well-known athlete during this time period to become engaged with social issues. LeBron became something of a poster child for athletes using social media for this reason, though he would also speak on social issues at press conferences. At the same time, James’ activism was very brand-conscious; he strategically selected causes he felt that he could advocate for without compromising his future goals in the league, as well as his interests in media production and team ownership. This form of brand-conscious activism set a precedent for how many athletes relate to politics today. You do not see many athletes willing to risk their careers like Kaepernick did. As such, James and Kaepernick represent two contrasting examples of the diverse forms of athletic activism that have evolved over the last decade.
This research is from many years ago, but my current scholarship remains invested in the relationship between sports and social justice. For a recent project, I collected data by interviewing people who worked in athletic communications at the collegiate sport level to understand how university athletic departments represent issues related to race, gender, and mental health. I am also exploring how athletic communications departments discuss social justice issues and portray the differences between men and women’s sports.
[MastersinCommunications.com] Prior to your time at the University of Detroit Mercy, you worked as a digital journalist covering professional and collegiate sports and held an alternative academic research position at Spring Health. How has your experience working in these professional roles influenced your approach to research and teaching? Are there insights you would share for graduate students who might be considering careers in journalism or alternative academic positions?
[Dr. David Cassilo] I began my career as a sports journalist, returned to school to get my Ph.D., then took a faculty position at Kennesaw State University. After that, I took a brief hiatus from teaching to work as a researcher at Spring Health before taking my current position at the University of Detroit Mercy.
I think that most people view getting your Ph.D. as a path toward becoming a professor, and that is definitely one place it can take you. At the same time, if you find something you are passionate about in the way that I was passionate about mental health research, there are often opportunities outside of academia to explore those passions. Academics are people who understand research, which is a widely useful skill in itself. There are research firms, for example, and organizations that do user-experience research. The expertise of academic disciplines is often useful across many different contexts as well. For example, if you study communication, this gives you an understanding of how to communicate and how to identify communication patterns that can be very useful to a variety of different organizations.
A graduate degree is not a prerequisite to working as a journalist, and there are not too many people with academic backgrounds working in sports journalism. Even so, if that is a route you are considering, I think your work in the industry would be much better informed. Graduate school supplies you with an understanding of major mass communication theories like agenda setting, framing, and uses and gratifications theory. It can also provide a better understanding of issues like gender, race, and health within sport and media, affording you the opportunity to take a more critical approach to your journalism. Some academics do freelance as journalists, and I think they bring an important perspective because they have the tools to adopt this more critical vantage point.
[MastersinCommunications.com] At UDM, alongside teaching, you are Advisor for The Varsity News. Would you tell us about your approach to this role and your goals for the student newspaper under your advisorship?
[Dr. David Cassilo] The Varsity News is the student newspaper at UDM. The students cover everything relevant to life at the university. I was selected to serve in that role because my journalism experience means I can teach the students how to edit, write, and lay-out the newspaper. I think my research background helps me better guide my students in selecting quality stories and learning what perspectives to highlight and angles to take in telling those stories that might allow them to tackle the power dynamics informing the issues that they cover.
My primary goals are to help tell the story of the university and to give the students opportunities to further their own careers in journalism. I want my students to have as much experience as possible that is relevant to the current state of journalism, so I focus a lot of attention on video production, social media, and digital journalism. While I may wish there were more physical newspapers to read, print journalism is just not what it was in today’s society. I want to help my students equip themselves to go beyond UDM and become journalists, if that is the path they choose to pursue.
[MastersinCommunications.com] Based on your expertise and experience, do you have advice you would give to students who are interested in digital journalism, health communication, or sports communication and are considering pursuing a graduate degree in communication or a related field like journalism?
[Dr. David Cassilo] I think this is a very rewarding field. Many people want to be sports journalists, but you can be involved in sports media in a variety of different ways. Some people thrive as beat reporters or television sports reporters. But if you find yourself asking a lot of questions about sports media — about why things are the way they are — then pursuing a graduate degree might align with your interests.
I love sports and have wanted to find a career in sport since I was in high school. I did not know that I was going to become an academic, but found that my own interests and curiosities lend themselves to this type of work. Academic positions let you do many different, interesting kinds of work. You get to do research, use your writing skills, and be in front of a classroom engaging with a collegiate audience. My interest in research came last, but has been a natural fit because it is still a way to write about sports, and it can be very impactful.
Sports communication is also an expanding field that is now being taken very seriously in academia, so it is an exciting time to get involved in the discipline.
Thank you, Dr. Cassilo, for sharing your insight on sports communication, athlete physical and mental health, protest and social activism in sports, and more!
Please note: Our interview series aims to represent the diverse research being pursued by scholars in the field of communication, which is often socially and politically engaged. As a result, all readers may not agree with the views and opinions expressed in this interview, which are independent of the views of MastersinCommunications.com, its parent company, partners, and affiliates.
