Race, ethnicity, and content analysis of the sports media: a critical reflection

Abstract

Opinions about and attitudes towards the constructs of race and ethnicity in contemporary Western society are not only influenced by institutions such as those of academic institutions, politics, education, family or paid labour, but also by the media. Popular forms of media culture, varying from news broadcasts and talk shows to soap operas and music videos, can be highly influential in structuring ideas about race and ethnicity. Entman contended that the media 'call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements ' (1993: 55). The media create dominant interpretations of reality that appeal to a desired or anticipated audience. According to Hall (1995Hall ( , 1997, the media are not only a powerful source of dominant ideas about race and ethnicity, but should also be considered as sites of constantly shifting meanings and struggles over meaning. This is evident in the way that the media on the one hand celebrate successful African-Americans like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan, while also confirming and reinforcing racist stereotypes. According to Jessica Rhodes, a scholar in ethnic studies and mass communication, racist stereotypes have been embedded in the US mass media since the 18th century, whether it be 'the benign and happy slave figure', 'the black brute who rapes white women' or the 'promiscuous black woman ' (1995: 36-7). This stereotypical and one-dimensional framing of

Constructing Racial/Ethnic Difference in and Through Dutch Televised Soccer Commentary

“…We recommend further research be conducted into how categories used (implicitly) in sports commentary are congruent with the understandings that sport media audiences have of race and ethnicity (Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers & De Leeuw, 2010). Visual images also need to be analyzed as well as the content of future sports and soccer coverage and the numerous talk shows about sport.…”

Quantitative insights into televised birth: a content analysis ofOne Born Every Minute

“…To speak to our concerns about which women were depicted giving birth on OBEM , we created codes around class, race and ethnicity, sexuality, disability and relationship status. Drawing on Orgad and De Benedictis (2015) and Skeggs, Thumim, and Wood (2008), class was subcategorized into “upper class,” “middle-class,” “lower middle-class/working-class” and “unclear/unknown.” With Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers, and De Leeuw’s (2010) critique of the propensity for content analyses to delimit subcategorizations of race and ethnicity to “black–white,” we informed subcategories by the social context that media discourses are embedded. We used subcategories of “white,” “black,” “Asian,” “minority ethnic” and “unclear/unknown” reflecting contemporary U.K. diversity discourses, although we acknowledge that the “black, Asian and minority ethnic” (BAME) categorization is problematic as it still works to define whiteness (Saha, 2017).…”

Exploring Discourses About Race/Ethnicity in a Spanish TV Football Program

“…Given the popularity of televised men's football where football players from different racial/ethnic backgrounds come together and are commented upon (Rojas Torrijos, 2016), it is relevant to study these discourses in the Spanish context. Besides contributing to the body of literature in this area we also aim at advancing existing content analyses of sports commentary by using a more complex, layered approach to race/ethnicity that better applies to the Spanish context, for which the Black-White dichotomy that was widely used in earlier studies may be limiting (van Sterkenburg, 2020).…”