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

Olga Kolotouchkina, Carmen Llorente-Barroso, María Luisa García-Guardia and Juan Pavón
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Olga Kolotouchkina: School of Humanities and Communication Sciences, University CEU San Pablo, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Carmen Llorente-Barroso: Faculty of Information Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
María Luisa García-Guardia: Faculty of Information Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Juan Pavón: Institute of Knowledge Technology, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: disability; Paralympic Games; media; news program; stereotypes; gender; ablenationalism; assistive technologies; RTVE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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