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Bulletin 61 print

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| Feature | No.61 May 2011 |

A Brief Review of the Literature on Media Coverage of the Paralympic Games
Brenda-Kammel Atuona
“.....cultural representations of disability or disabled people are the bedrock on which institutional discrimination rests. And until you really take that seriously.....and the majority of the media don`t, then you`re never going to change attitudes”.
(K. Cochrane, 2008)
Introduction
From the inception of rehabilitative sports competitions for ex-service men and women with spinal injuries the Paralympic Games have experienced an astounding growth. Statistics provided by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) demonstrate the extent to which the Games have grown from a small gathering of 130 athletes from two countries in 1952 to an international festival of almost 4000 athletes from 146 countries in 2008 (IPC, 2009). Considered as the summit of disability sport (Gold and Gold; 2007; Schantz and Gilbert, 2001) it has been suggested that the Paralympic Games have played a crucial role in changing attitudes by emphasising and elevating the status of disability sport where participants earn esteem as athletes in their own right, thereby challenging prevailing assumptions and stereotypes about `disability` (De Pauw and Gavron, 1995; Gold and Gold; 2007, Krahe and Altwasser, 2006).
The growing importance of the Paralympic Games has been accompanied by an ever-increasing media presence and interest (Schantz and Gilbert, 2001; Brittain, 2009). As explained by Brittain (2009) the number of accredited media representation has more than doubled over the last four Games with the IPC (2009) reporting record media attendance at the 2004 Athens Games with 2,600 representatives of the mass media (of which 1500 were press representatives), and a continuation of such a trend in the 2008 Beijing Games. Whilst this provides evidence of a dramatic progression in the spheres of disability and disability sport, the nature of coverage afforded to the Paralympic Games has been the subject of critical debate amongst numerous writers (Stein, 1989; Schell and Duncan, 1999; Schantz and Gilbert, 2001; Thomas and Smith, 2003; Sherrill, 1993, 1997; Alao, 2005). Generally, criticisms have centred on the fact that media coverage of these Games has been significantly less than that allocated to the Olympic Games (Stein, 1989; Schell and Duncan, 1999; Alao, 2005), of a pejorative and prejudicial nature (Thomas and Smith, 2003, 2009; Schantz and Gilbert, 2003) and an extension of the inequalities faced by women in society (Sherrill, 1993; Thomas and Smith, 2003, 2009).
The impact of stereotypes and imagery of the representation of disabled people by the media is a widely discussed issue (Barnes, 1992; Auslander and Gold, 1999; Thomas and Smith, 2003). This is perhaps because of the long held belief of the potential that the media has to influence public perceptions. Experimental evidence has indicated that while the mass media has little power in changing people`s opinion on issues that they have already formed a strong judgment, it has a profound affect when it comes to setting the agenda and priming people on new issues (Fog, 1999). This insight is crucial when considering the role media plays in informing members of the public who have no or limited personal experience of disability and disability issues.
Barnes in 1992 noted a growing awareness among disabled people of the resulting role media distortion of their experiences has played in their experience of institutional discrimination. He contends that negative stereotypical assumptions about disabled people are inherent to our culture and persist partly because they are constantly reproduced through the communications media. It is also important to note that as well as the tendency for the press to portray and reproduce particular stereotypical views of disabled people and their life experiences, the press is also believed to reinforce other social divisions particularly in relation to `gender` (Gill, 2006; Hermes, 1997; Gauntlett, 2002) and `race` (Lull, 2003; Hall, 1974; Hartmann and Husband, 1974; Rhodes, 1993). Yet while the gendered nature of media treatment of disabled people has increasingly been the focus of academic discourse (Thomas and Smith, 2003; Maas and Hasbrook, 2001), the specific ways in which black and ethnic minority disabled people figure in these discourses has remained largely unanalysed and untheorised.
While taking all of the above into account this paper provides a brief review of literature in and around the media depictions of athletes with disability, with recommendations for further research.
Disability, Sport and the Media
The relationship between sport and the mass media in Western societies has been characterised as a `symbiotic` one (Coakley, 2003; Trujillo, 2001) in which sports and media organisations have provided mutual resources and experienced complementary growth. The global popularity of sport is due largely to the vast attention provided by the mass media. On the other hand, circulation and advertising of sport has enabled media to achieve enormous sales as a result of this extensive treatment (Coakley, 2003). When interpreted from a critical perspective, sport media and disability intersect in interesting ways, as it is has often been argued that sport and the media function hegemonically to reproduce and reinforce dominant ideologies of social order (Trujillo, 2001; Yiannakis and Melnick, 2001). That is to say that the media coverage of sport reflects and perpetuates the dominance of leadership of non-disabled people over disabled people through pervasive expressions of held beliefs.
Exclusive of media, the very concept and construct of sport can reinforce the status of disabled people in wider society. According to Barton (1993), sport is a creation of and for non-disabled people giving priority to certain types of human movement, with a prescribed set of standards by which athletes are measured (Devine, 1997). These standards are designed, according to Brittain (2004), to highlight and revere extremes of bodily physical perfection through associations with fitness, health, dynamism, youth and sex appeal which sharply contrasts with images of sport for disabled individuals as `ill`, `lame`, `crippled`, `mutilated` individuals (Schantz and Gilbert, 2001). Indeed, Brittain (2004) agrees and contends that “disability sport [therefore] does not, apparently, provide images that fit within the norms that delineate sporting images within society” (p.448) So, within this context, the idea of elite sport for people with disabilities- who fall short of societies standards of an ideal body- is paradoxical or in Brittain`s opinion, (2004: p.438) `an anathema`. Mastro et al., (1988) also lends support to this argument as in their opinion, part of the reason for this is no culturally recognised need for competition and sports for disabled people beyond therapeutic programs which further extends the schism between the social construction of sport and traditional perceptions of disability rooted in the medical model.
A clear indicator of societal attitudes towards disability sport may be seen in the differences in time spent covering the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Schantz and Gilbert, 2001; Brittain, 2009). A comparative study of press coverage conducted by Alao (2005) indicated that of the four newspapers in her study, 926 articles were published concerning the Olympic Games in Athens 2004. In comparison, 51 articles were published concerning the Paralympic Games. In this case, the amount of Paralympic Games coverage therefore suggests that disability sports is of significantly less value than mainstream sport. This is supported by a landmark study conducted by Schantz and Gilbert (2001) who found that popular French and German newspapers reflected a generally low opinion with regards to the value of sport for disabled people. They conclude that disability sport is marginalised and trivialised in most newspapers and to some extent this appears to be the case today.
Barnes (1992) has previously noted the ways in which disabled peoples` experiences of disability are shaped by the media. In relation to coverage of disability sport studies, the use of language and terminology by newspaper journalists reaffirms traditional medicalised and individualised views of disabled people (Thomas and Smith, 2003; Schantz and Gilbert, 2001) without acknowledging the socio-genetic dimensions of disability (Barnes, 1992; Barton, 1993). For instance, Thomas and Smith (2001) highlight how Calvin (2000) describes disability as releasing `Runners….from the solitary confinement of autism… [and]….swimmers….from the chrysalis of a broken body” (p.114). They argue that in this way, disability is conceived of as an experience beyond the normal world and may be reflective of what some people across a range of societies perceive disability to be. This use of language, therefore, has the desired affect of evoking the emotion of pity, underscoring the perception of disabled peoples` lives being full of constant pain, requiring medical interventions to ameliorate their `abnormalities` (Swain and French; Thomas and Smith, 2003).
A key observation in the work of Thomas and Smith (2003) was the tendency for newspaper coverage to draw comparisons between Paralympic and Olympic athletes in a way which appeared to depict Paralympians as emulating `able-bodiedness`. In this sense, it is believed that Paralympic athletes may have been portrayed as responding to the perception held by some non-disabled people that their bodies are defective, and through sport a reformed body is created to legitimate their acceptance as people in the social world (Hargreaves, 2000; Thomas and Smith, 2003) In many ways, participation in sport and physical activity for people with disabilities is indeed a way of managing the stigma of disability (Taub et al., 1999). Nixon (1984) and Asken (1991) explain that participation aides the perception of disabled people as being no significantly different from their non-disabled counterpart. In this use of comparisons to non-disabled Olympic athletes by press journalists, as noted by Thomas and Smith (2003), could be founded in this very idea. However, it should not be dismissed as to how this idea can further undermine the attempts of disabled people to form an identity of their own and continue to build one based on the ideals of non-disabled people.
Of great concern to disability sport academics and writers is the nature of photographic coverage and the ways in which it can reinforce previously held perceptions of disability sport and disability in general. For example, it has been clearly shown that images of Paralympic athletes are often framed in a way to hide the disability (Pappous, 2008; Thomas and Smith, 2003; Schantz and Gilbert, 2001) and mostly feature wheelchair athletes to the detriment of others (Thomas and Smith, 2003; Schell and Duncan, 1999; Schantz and Gilbert, 2001; Pappous, 2008). In regards to the extensive photographic coverage of wheelchair athletes, it appears to be a reflection of stereotypical perceptions of disability being synonymous with physical immobility and wheelchair use, which according to Barnes (1992) reinforces widespread ignorance about the realities of impairment. By focusing on wheelchair athletes and constructing photos that appeared to hide an athlete`s impairment, Thomas and Smith (2003) suggest that much of the coverage denies the athlete`s identity as a person with an impairment which could ultimately disenfranchise those readers with disabilities, through focus placed on those who appear to be more physically capable of competing in sport.
As previously mentioned is the absence of research seeking to conceptualise the interaction of race and disability in sport. Hardin et al. (2006) in their study `Depicting the Sporting Body` have attempted to give voice to this issue by looking at the representation of black disabled women in sport. Hardin et al., (2006) provide a unique analysis through their examination of the relationship between images of sport, disability, gender and race in four U.S. women`s sport/fitness magazines. As was expected, non-white women with a disability were completely invisible which in their opinion emphasised an ableist emphasis on sexual difference. They also argue that black disabled women in sport are guaranteed the bottom spot of the hegemonic hierarchy because they do not conform to `white` standards of femininity but are also marginalised because of their `lack of able-bodiedness`.
Concluding Statements
From a researcher`s perspective it is important to consider the unique experiences of black disabled (male or female) athletes as race cannot simply be added to existing theoretical frameworks. The oppression of black disabled athletes is qualitatively different in kind to that of their white counterparts. However, since sport both reinforces and reproduces `persistent`, `resurgent; and veiled` forms of white power that permeate society (King et al., 2007, p.4) the targeting and removal of racist, disablist (and sexist) narratives in coverage of sport has the potential to enable Black disabled male and female athletes to envision and achieve equality within wider society.
Most of the studies that have been conducted have been researchers` analysis on coverage and therefore have a level of subjectivity and are also quite difficult to draw inferences on what the wider population may be interpreting. Millington and Wilson (2010) call for the presence of audience perceptions in the form of reception research to be more present in sport media research. The opportunity to do this is becoming more available with increasing press coverage of the Games and also more broadcasting time being devoted to disability sport. Channel 4 have promised extensive coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games - perhaps it is now that the reception of the audience plays a bigger role in researching ideals towards disabled people in sport.
References
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Contact
Brenda-Kammel Atuona
University of Kent
Kent, United Kingdom
Email: b.atuona@kent.ac.uk

http://www.icsspe.org/