Media Coverage of Thomas Hitzlsperger’s Coming-out in German Newspapers

Schallhorn, Christiana; Hempel, Anne

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2015.1112243

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…While much of the previous research in this field has explored media reactions to athletes coming out, this study offers a novel insight into media coverage of, and public response to, a Pride Game in professional sport. Much of the existing research has focused on basketball, American football, and soccer in the United States, UK, and Europe (Billings et al, 2015; Cassidy, 2017; Cleland, 2015; Cleland et al, 2018; Kian et al, 2015; Schallhorn & Hempel, 2017). By comparison, this study offers insight into how the media and public frame LGBTIQ issues in a different sport (Australian football) and cultural context (Australia).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cleland (2014) compared coverage of Swedish soccer player Anton Hysén’s coming out in 2011 with that of Justin Fashanu in 1990 and noted that “a significant number of articles stress the need for key stakeholders in football [soccer] (players, fans, clubs, agents, the authorities, and the media) to accept gay players” (p. 1269). Media coverage of German soccer player Thomas Hitzlsperger’s coming out in 2015 was also overwhelmingly supportive (Schallhorn & Hempel, 2017).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Internationally, media coverage of male professional athletes’ coming out has slowly transitioned from reinforcing the hegemonic masculinity historically found in sport to more accepting models of inclusive masculinity. Coming out announcements from professional and college athletes in the United States, such as NBA player Jason Collins, and European soccer players have generated a more positive media discourse (Cashmore & Cleland, 2012; Cassidy, 2017; Cleland, 2015; Kian et al, 2015; Schallhorn & Hempel, 2017). Research also demonstrates a decreasing cultural homophobia in online spaces (e.g., social media and Internet message boards) over time (Billings et al, 2015; Cleland, 2015; Kian, 2015; Luisi et al, 2016) and more accepting discourse in specific cases including examples from English soccer (Cleland, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Football, Media, and Homophobia: Public Framing of the First Pride Game in the Australian Football League

Sherwood

Donaldson

Dyson

et al. 2020

Communication & Sport

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Two Australian football clubs—St Kilda and the Sydney Swans—played the first Pride Game in Australian professional sport in 2016 to support and include the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) community at and through a major sporting event. This study examines the framing of this game in the print and online media and in public responses via comments on media coverage and comments on Facebook posts. The framing of both the media coverage and the public response was predominantly supportive, with the theme of the “inclusion,” of gay Australian Football League players and the broader LGBTIQ community, prominent. However, there was a significant difference in the frames used in media coverage compared to the public response to this coverage. There was a relatively high proportion of unsupportive comments (e.g., a “stick to football” theme), including pernicious homophobia, present, particularly in the public response, compared to other recent related research. Overall, the findings suggest that, while there was strong support for the Pride Game, homophobia in sport remains, and the media, particularly social media, can be a platform for its expression. This study also highlights the value in analysing multiple platforms in media framing research.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Football, Media, and Homophobia: Public Framing of the First Pride Game in the Australian Football League

Sherwood

Donaldson

Dyson

et al. 2020

Communication & Sport

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“…On the surface, the public reaction to Hitzlsperger's coming out was very positive. Public figures from the realm of politics, of entertainment, and of soccer spoke glowingly about his courage (Schallhorn and Hempel 2017). As journalists of the Süddeutsche Zeitung observed: "Respect.…”

Section: The Public Discourse On Thomas Hitzlsperger's "Coming-out"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusive Masculinities, Homosexuality and Homophobia in German Professional Soccer

Kaelberer

2019

Sexuality & Culture

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German society and even German soccer have become more acceptant of the idea of inclusive masculinities. Hyper-masculinity is no longer the only paradigm dominating discourses on soccer. Other forms of masculinities have become more accepted in the German public and its soccer community. Nevertheless, two major aspects of homophobia remain part of the German soccer scene. First, homophobic epithets and chants continue to represent a major ingredient of the climate in soccer stadiums. Second, there is the absence of openly homosexual top-level soccer players. So far, no active players in top division German soccer have come out as gay. What explains this contrast between the acceptance of inclusive masculinities and the continued homophobia of the game? This paper analyses discourses on masculinity, homosexuality and homophobia in German professional soccer to address this puzzle. I argue that the increasing commercialization of the game and the efforts of preserving the tradition of the game tend to pull in the same direction and, therefore, reinforce each other. There simply are no large constituencies and advocacy groups that would have strong interests in eradicating homophobia.

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“…In media and communication studies, one also finds some recent work on celebrities publicly coming out (for example, Benozzo 2013 studies the coming out of an Italian pop star), with most studies investigating the coming out of gay male athletes (e.g. Kian, Anderson and Shipka 2015, King 2017, Magrath, Cleland and Anderson 2017, Schallhorn and Hempel 2015, maybe because professional sport (and especially male team sports) is a context in which traditional hegemonic masculinities are still highly valued and same-sex affection is viewed as a threat (see Nylund 2004). Popular culture and the pop music industry, by contrast, are associated with a longer tradition of exploring gender and sexuality more progressively (Kian, Anderson and Shipka 2015: 621-622).…”

Section: Language Coming Out and Normativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Coming out and normative shifts

Motschenbacher

2020

Sociolinguistic Studies

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This study seeks to shed light on discursive shifts in sexuality-related normativity that are associated with coming out. Subscribing to a queer linguistically informed type of critical discourse studies, it investigates the usage patterns of two labels that are commonly used to denote same-sex sexualities: gay and homosexual. The meanings and usages of these forms are first discussed more generally, based on evidence from an earlier study on a major English reference corpus. The analytical part studies the usage patterns of the two terms in a corpus of news reports on Ricky Martin more specifically, through a systematic inspection of concordance lines. For this purpose, the usages of the two forms are analysed in and compared across two sub-corpora, one with texts dating from before and one with texts dating from after the artist's public coming out as a gay man. Besides a quantification of the terms in the two corpora, the main focus is on the qualitative analysis of the usage patterns that the terms exhibit in the data. The patterns thus identified are discussed in relation to the discursive construction of coming out as a central experience of non-heterosexual people and as discursive evidence for normative shifts associated with coming out.

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Media Coverage of Thomas Hitzlsperger’s Coming-out in German Newspapers

Cited by 19 publications

References 42 publications

Football, Media, and Homophobia: Public Framing of the First Pride Game in the Australian Football League

Football, Media, and Homophobia: Public Framing of the First Pride Game in the Australian Football League

Inclusive Masculinities, Homosexuality and Homophobia in German Professional Soccer

Coming out and normative shifts

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