Making sense of race/ethnicity and gender in televised football: reception research among British students

Most people today watch football by way of the mass media, sites that reproduce and transform ideologies and ideas surrounding racial/ethnic and gender identity. However, still little remains known as to what extent actual football viewers take up or resist these ideas. Drawing on a cultural studies perspective, this study tries to identify the dominant discourses that British television viewers use to assign meaning to race/ethnicity and gender in men’s and women’s football on television. Eleven focus groups of British students (n = 44) were utilized to explore these discourses. Our findings indicate that viewers from various ethnic backgrounds were largely compliant with the hegemonic media discourses about natural physicality in both gender and race/ethnic comparisons. At the same time, multiple negotiated/oppositional discourses were found in relation to women’s football that showed how other social practices contributed to such readings. Limitations and possible areas for future research are discussed

Prejudice in the people’s game. A content analysis of race/ethnicity in Polish televised football

This study explores how televised football in Poland serves as a site for the (re)construction of discourses surrounding race and ethnicity and to what extent this squares with previous studies on sport media conducted mainly in Western countries. In our analysis, we identify the discourses surrounding race and ethnicity that the commentators in televised football draw on and examine how they relate to hegemonic discourses and categorizations in wider Polish society. Our findings show that Polish football commentators draw on transnationally circulating racialized/ethnicized discourses on assumed superior physicality when talking about Black football players and on supposed negative psychological capabilities when talking about White Southern European football players. The findings also show that when talking about non-Polish players and head coaches, the commentators regularly rely on an us-versus-them frame that constructs foreign influences as a threat

The diversification of national football teams

The inclusion of foreign-born sportspeople in national sports teams has become increasingly common. At the same time, the assumed increase in diversity within national football teams has turned into a major subject of (inter)national controversy and debate. This applies, in particular, to the football World Cup, as the assumed increase in foreign-born players in national football teams detracts from the (homogeneous) nation-state basis of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) international football competitions. However, the actual dynamics and complexities of the presence of foreign-born players in national football teams within this context have remained under-researched. In this paper, we use the idea of ‘migration corridors’ to examine the underlying structures that contribute to the diversification of national football teams, in particular during the World Cup. We do so from both an immigration and emigration perspective. By connecting our foreign-born player data to three types of migration corridors, we discuss the bidirectiona

Paralympische Spelen op televisie: interpretatie en representatie

Introductie en onderzoeksvraag “ ‘Het is maar gehandicaptensport, een ver-van-mijn-bed-show, laat maar!’ Ik word daar zo pissig van.” (Esther Vergeer, in Sport & Strategie, november 2011, p. 12) Bovenstaand citaat toont de frustratie die Esther Vergeer, zevenvoudig Paralympisch kampioen rolstoeltennis, voelt over de geringe aandacht in de media voor gehandicaptensport. Het is een centraal thema in het onderzoek dat voor u ligt. Van 29 augustus tot 9 september 2012 vond de Paralympische Spelen in Londen plaats. Dit evenement is inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een mega-evenement waarin meer dan 4000 atleten participeren uit 166 landen (International Paralympic Committee, in Misener et al., 2012). Ondanks de sterke groei en grootte van dit evenement bestaat er nog maar zeer weinig kennis over hoe en in welke mate de Paralympische Spelen op televisie bekeken en ontvangen/geïnterpreteerd worden door kijkers met een lichamelijke beperking. Niet alleen wetenschappelijk, ook juist maatschappelijk lijkt dit van belang. Uit eerste oriënterende gesprekken die zijn gevoerd voor aanvang van deze studie, alsmede uit internationaal onderzoek, blijkt bij mediagebruikers met een fysieke beperking frustratie te leven over de manier waarop en de mate waarin de media verslag doen van gehandicaptensport (Hardin & Hardin, 2004). Dit is ook niet zo verwonderlijk als we kijken naar internationaal onderzoek dat gedaan is naar de manier waarop sporters met een lichamelijke beperking in de media gerepresenteerd worden. In de eerste plaats blijkt er een gebrek te zijn aan zichtbaarheid van sporters met een beperking in de media, en dus ook aan rolmodellen (Hardin & Hardin, 2004). Daarnaast worden lichamen van sporters met een beperking relatief vaak gerepresenteerd als ‘zwak’ ‘ongezond’, ‘ niet competent’ en ‘inferieur’ ten opzichte van lichamen van valide sporters (Buysse & Borcherding, 2010). Verslaggevers lijken zich bijvoorbeeld vaker te richten op de handicap dan op de sportprestaties (Oosterwijk, 2011; Van Bottenburg, 2009). Engelen (2010) concludeerde in haar afstudeerscriptie dan ook dat er grot

Colorblind Ideology in Traditional and Online Media: Towards a Future Research Agenda

Abstract While much research has looked at colorblind ideology in mainstream traditional media content and production, few studies have investigated the expression and status of colorblind ideology in social media. The present chapter addresses this discrepancy by reviewing academic literature on colorblind discourse in both traditional and social media. In the light of the literature reviewed, this chapter (i) underlines the complexities of both on- and offline expressions of race and racism, and the extent to which they are co-constructive. Furthermore, this chapter highlights the need to (ii) sensitize media practitioners and researchers on colorblind ideology to ensure that (iii) racism is treated, in research as well as in the media, as a structural phenomenon rather than as punctuated events