New Europe, old games? Making sense of Anglo-Polish media coverage of England versus Poland football matches

Representations of race/ethnicity and the nation: A content analysis of televised Polish international football

“…This is also illustrated by the use of emotionally charged statements such as “38 million hearts, transcending the divisions, beating in the same one rhythm today like the 11 who are on the pitch in white and red [colors of the Polish national team's jersey]”. Since the Polish team is popularly perceived as an embodiment of the nation (Jaskułowski and Majewski, 2016; Maguire et al, 2009) this representational pattern might also reflect current dominant meanings given to the Polish men's football team and to Polishness.…”

“…Not surprisingly, therefore, a rich body of literature has explored the key symbolic role of mediated international sporting spectacles in shaping and reinforcing dominant and 'banal' understandings of national identity (Billig, 1995;Mauro, 2020;Piller, 2017). Works have also shown that the Polish national football team is popularly understood to serve as an embodiment and representation of the nation and its values (Jaskułowski and Majewski, 2016;Maguire et al, 2009). Elgenius and Garner (2021) argue that previous works have often overlooked how race/ethnicity is a constituent factor in dominant discourses about national belonging.…”

The UEFA European Football Championship 2012 and pop nationalism in Poland: between confirmation and contestation

“…In their narratives, the emotional community of football fans became the metonymy of the entire Polish nation. However, as we already mentioned, the main symbol was the Polish football team itself, which was constantly highlighted by the media as well as respondents (Maguire et al 2009). In the eyes of the informants, the male players were the personification of the nation, the embodiment of national pride, an incarnation of national identity and a visible and physical representation of 'Polishness', its virtues and, at times, its vices.…”

Racist and neo-Nazi panic in the Euro 2012 coverage by the British press: a discursive failure in interculturalism

“…The vision of violent football-related neoNazi racism in the Euro 2012 host countries had high commercial value as it fitted well within the framework of the established newsworthiness model: it was fresh and topical; it concerned a mega event, thus being of sufficient magnitude; it was culturally and geographically proximate to Britain and its press reading public; it involved football celebrities and UEFA elites. The Sky Sports and BBC Panorama programmes conveniently provided a suitable springboard for the press to discursively reinforce the news value of the tournament by foregrounding its negative sides, by intensifying the emotional appeal through personalization, and by invoking the long-lived Western stereotype of culturally inferior Eastern Europe characterized by corrupt politics, intolerance of difference, xenophobia, persecution of minorities, organized crime and disorder in the public sphere (Iordanova 1995;Maguire et al 2009;Mawby and Gisby 2009;Light and Young 2009;Korte et al 2010;Wawrzyczek et al 2010).…”

“…On the one hand, the media spend a great deal of their resources on sports; newspapers dedicate special sections to sport news and commentary, they employ large numbers of sports columnists and reporters, and sports programming constitutes a substantial part of television and radio networks as well as of various online media formats (Wenner 1998;Raney and Bryant 2006;Billings and Hardin 2014). Yet, academic research on mediated sports in today's world points to the perpetuation of nationalism, social stratifications and cultural prejudices by various forms of "othering" in sports reporting and representations of athletes (Bishop and Jaworski 2003;Wensing and Bruce 2003;Bruce, 2004;Dimeo and Kay 2004;Hardin et al 2004;Maguire et al 2009;Inthorn 2010;Hammett 2011;Mishra 2012;Bruce 2015).…”