6–10 Jun 2022
Tübingen
Europe/Berlin timezone

Football talk: How Spanish youth give meaning to race/ethnicity.

8 Jun 2022, 16:10
20m

Speaker

Carmen Longas Luque

Description

Many content analyses have shown how journalists draw on racial stereotypes or myths when commenting on live sports such as football or basketball, providing evidence for the important role of sports media in the construction of knowledge about race/ethnicity. For example, one of the most common findings suggests that “Black” athletes are more often associated with physical characteristics, in contrast to their “White” counterparts, who are more likely to be associated with psychological characteristics such as leadership or team play. However, less is known about how audiences deal with these messages. Do they accept them uncritically or do they challenge the biased football commentary they hear on television? From a Cultural Studies perspective, and in order to answer this question, we conducted 14 focus groups with Spanish youth in the summer of 2021. They were asked to reflect on issues such as racial/ethnic diversity on the pitch, the composition of the national team and their perceptions of sports media. We analysed the content of these focus groups using a bottom-up approach, as informed by Grounded Theory, that is, allowing the data to “emerge” from the text itself. Preliminary analysis of the interviews shows how Spanish youth draw on a mixture of discourses, both reinforcing and challenging hegemonic media discourses. Results will be discussed in light of the wider Spanish context and discourses regarding race and ethnicity.

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