Disability, Sport, and Television: Media Visibility and Representation of Paralympic Games in News Programs

With a few exceptions, media visibility and representation of people with disabilities is scarce. It is biased and anchored in stigma, distorting their image and hindering their full social participation. Paralympic sport is one of the social fields where the challenge of an objective representation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2021-01, Vol.13 (1), p.256
Main Authors: Kolotouchkina, Olga, Llorente-Barroso, Carmen, García-Guardia, María Luisa, Pavón, Juan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Athletes
Athletes with disabilities
Communication
Disability discrimination
Games
Media coverage
Nationalism
Paralympic Games
People with disabilities
Perceptions
Prejudice
Representations
Sports
Stereotypes
Sustainability
Television
Visibility
Wheelchairs
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Summary:With a few exceptions, media visibility and representation of people with disabilities is scarce. It is biased and anchored in stigma, distorting their image and hindering their full social participation. Paralympic sport is one of the social fields where the challenge of an objective representation of disability becomes particularly important due to the ever-increasing amount of television attention to the Paralympic Games as a global sports event and some persisting stereotypes in media representation of athletes with disabilities. Through an exploratory and interpretive research method, aimed at assessing media visibility of disability from the perspective of content production and its dissemination, the paper reviews the evolution of media representation of the Paralympic Games and athletes with disabilities during Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, and PyeongChang 2018 global sports events in the daily news programs from the National Spanish Broadcaster, RTVE. The effective inclusion of people with disabilities in the public sphere and a progressive removal of stereotypes and stigma depends to a great extent on the visibility and objective representation of disability in media.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su13010256