Mediated Football

Football has become one of the most mediated cultural practices in modern Western societies, providing players, officials and spectators with implicit and often hidden discourses about race/ethnicity, national identity and gender. This book provides new and critical insights into how mediated football as a contested cultural practice influences, and is influenced by, discourses and stereotypes about race/ethnicity, nation and gender that operate at the local, national and global level. It analyzes both contemporary media representations and the ways these representations are negotiated, interpreted and used by football media audiences. These issues are explored across all media genres (print media, television, online, social media, film, and so forth) in a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural manner, with contributions from diverse disciplines and countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Jacco van Sterkenburg is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media & Communication and the Erasmus Research Centre for Media Communication and Culture, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Mulier Institute in The Netherlands. Ramón Spaaij is Associate Professor in the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living and the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He is also Special Chair of Sociology of Sport at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Visiting Professor in the School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

1. Introduction - Mediated football: Representations and audience receptions of race/ethnicity, gender and nation Part I: Representations 2. Football and the 'new' gender order: Brazilian cinema in the late 20th century 3. The coming of age of women's football in the Dutch sports media, 1995-2013 4. Sportswomen in the German popular press: A study carried out in the context of the 2011 Women's Football World Cup 5. The eternal talent, the French Senegalese, and the coach's troop: Broadcasting soccer on Slovenian public television 6. Myths of nation in the Champions League Part II: Audience receptions 7. The mediated nation and the transnational football fan 8. As Kiwi as? Contestation over the place of men's football in New Zealand culture 9. Fragments of us, fragments of them: Social media, nationality, and U.S. perceptions of the 2014 FIFA World Cup 10. Do they even know the national anthem? Minorities in service of the flag - Israeli Arabs in the national football team 11. Reading Ronaldo: Contingent whiteness in the football media