Eurobasket 2011 Euphoric courtside reporter Cheerful Cheerful player player Apathetic player Photo: Reuters
• Interpretive commentary in TV sports broadcasting spans between 27-41% [1,2] • Nationalized coverage — attracts stronger ratings [3] • Differential descriptions: “home” athletes’ qualities exaggerated, emblematic of nation’s character. Success attributed to immeasurable qualities. [4-6] • Ethnicity/race: Black are “natural” athletes, White have superior intellect, perseverance, and hard work [4,7,8]
Sports broadcasts on TV Slovenija [9,10,11] • Interpretive dialogue: – Olympics: 44% – Team sports: 30% – Largely attributing success (7/3); constant through nationality, ethnicity, gender • Slovenian representatives: [10] – More about talent/ability, extroversion (immeasurable) – Less about age, experience, past results (measurable) • White athletes: more about talent/ability • Black athletes: plenty about athletic speed/strength, past results, and performance expectations. Notions of physical superiority?
Some examples • “In lane 7, um… Huh, let me try reading this: Nirinahar … ifidy Ramili … jaona from Madagascar. I made it! I nearly broke my tongue .” • “ Nothing in particular, the group is still compact. Just one athlete, Min Thu Soe from Myanmar cannot, of course, keep up to this pace. Namely, the representative of Myanmar has a personal best, well, average for a women ’s competition, 15:16.23. He probably wouldn ’t even win the Slovenian national championship .”
Some examples • “The best asian runner, Yoshitaka Iwamizu. By ‘the best Asian runner,’ I mean, of course, from that true Asia, not those imported runners from Africa who compete for Gulf countries.” • “The Black imported Norwegian, Ezinne Okparaebo, is also very fast. Okparaebo actually comes from Nigeria and is one of the almost two million immigrants from other continents in Norway. When you walk through the streets of Oslo you feel as if you were in Nairobi and not in a Scandinavian capital.”
Some examples • “We’ve watch ed countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Virgin Islands, Guyana, the Netherlands Antilles, Micronesia, Turkmenistan, American Samoa, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sudan, Palestine, Tajikistan, the Maldives, Rwanda, Guinea, Malawi, Seychelles, Tanzania, Antigua and Barbuda, Laos, Yemen, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Congo. So, a whole bunch of, we could say, non-swimming countries . But it’s passed now.
Announcers’ feedback • Author: exoticism, sexiness etc. are ‘facts’ • Other announcers: wordings were inappropriate • Editor: “You can apply some sanctions, but the thing has already been said, anyway; the damage has been done .”
Announcers on patriotism • Veterans: ‘Certain amount’ of bias is ‘normal.’ • Former sports journalist association president: ? “The public does not accept unbiased commentators well.” • Editor: Veterans argue that commentators on public television should not use personal pronouns to denote competitors as ‘ours,’ or say that ‘we’ are playing. Personally “in doubt” regarding what approach is suitable, but “thinks” sportscasters should avoid sentences such as “our athletes” and “we are playing”.
Why this matters? • TV cultivates the way people see the world; it precedes and increasingly preempts reading as a source of information-gathering [12] • For sports fans, TV is king, and are heavier users of all media than non-sports fans [13] • Practical concern: driving away viewers that enjoy (merely) sports? What happens when ‘home’ team loses/plays badly?
Why this matters? • Bias and fandom in sports journalism*: – Public media and shifting notions of public – When have ‘fans’ uncovered foul play? → Ghanaian journalists barely managed to suppress news about match-fixing. [14] – Individuals enhance their self-esteem by identifying with social groups [15,16] • Slovenian Minister of education and sport: doping, match-fixing marginal phenomena. [17]
What is your view? Simon Ličen, Ph.D. Researcher and author Simon.Licen@guest.arnes.si
References 1. Bryant, J., Comisky, P. & Zillman, D. (1977). Drama in sports commentary. Journal of Communication , 27 (3): 140 – 149. 2. Woo, C.W., Kim, J.K., Nichols, C. & Zheng, L. (2010). International Sports Commentary Frame and Entertainment: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Commentary Differences in World Series Broadcasting. International Journal of Sport Communication , 3 (2): 240 – 255. 3. Kuper, S. & Szymanski, S. (2009). Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey — and Even Iraq —Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport. New York: Nation Books. 4. Billings, A.C. (2008). Olympic Media: inside the biggest show on television . London & New York: Routledge. 5. Billings, A.C., Angelini, J.R. & Holt, A. (2010). Gendered Profiles of Olympic History: Sportscaster Dialogue in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media , 54 (1): 9 – 23. 6. Real ,M. (1989). Super media: A cultural studies approach . London: Sage. 7. McCarthy, D. & Jones, R.L. (1997). Speed, Aggression, Strength, and Tactical Naivete: The Portrayal of the Black Soccer Player on Television. Journal of Sport and Social Issues , 21 (4): 348 – 62. 8. Simons, H.D. (2003). Race and Penalized Sports Behaviors. International Review for the Sociology of Sport , 38 (1): 5 – 22. 9. Billings, A.C. & Eastman, S.T. (2003). Framing identities: gender, ethnic, and national parity in network announcing of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Journal of Communication , 53 (4): 369 – 386. 10. Licen, S. & Billings, A.C. (2011/2012 — anticipated) . Cheering for “Our” Champs By Watching “Sexy” Female Throwers: Representation of Nationality and Gender in Slovenian 2008 Summer Olympic Television Coverage. Journal of Sport and Social Issues (submitted for publication). 11. Licen, S. (2011). Telecasting sports: Sports broadcasts on Slovenian public television (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana. 12. Gerbner, G. & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: the violence profile. Journal of Communication , 26 (2): 173 – 199. 13. Enoch, G. in Hardin, M. (2010). Television: Medium of choice for sports fans. Retrieved from http://sportsmediasociety.blogspot.com/2010/04/television-medium-of-choice-for-sports.html. 14. Hill, D. (2008). The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 15. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16. Turner, J.C. & Oakes, P.J. (1989). Self-categorization theory and social influence. In The psychology of group influence, ed. Paul B. Paulus, 233 – 275. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 17. STA [Slovenian Press Agency] (2010). Lukšič za STA: Največje težave športa so na mejnih področjih (intervju) .
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