Speaker
Description
"My research is concerned with the understandings of talent in youth football clubs in Sweden and Germany and part of my doctoral studies at Malmö University, Sweden.
The first part of my research is concerned with the socio-cultural understandings of talent reinforced in German and Swedish news outlets. The second part of my research investigates the sensemaking processes of local elite football clubs in Sweden and Germany.
Before looking at how talent is constructed at the elite level, it is important to understand how talent is constructed in the media as it has the power to influence our actions as coaches and keeping in mind that often discourses are brought to life in specific situations (Linell, 2009). Therefore, the analysis is part of a multi-method, multi-lingual, qualitative project which is designed using a sensemaking-framework inspired by Wibeck and Linnér (2021), sensemaking theory (Weick, 1985) and discourse-theoretical tools (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985).
The cases for this research (Sweden and Germany) have been chosen based on the importance that the researcher needs to be able to understand the local context and cultural conventions happening in the countries and football clubs that are being investigated (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978).
As part of this first study, I have looked at twenty Swedish and twenty German news outlets and designed a new model based on Laclau and Mouffe (1985) to analyze and present the data. The preliminary results show some cultural differences in the socio-cultural understandings constructed and reinforced in German and Swedish media.
