THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF PARALYMPICS GAMES LONDON/2012 IN THE WEBSITE GLOBOESPORTE.COM

Abstract

The goal of this research was to analyze the media coverage of the Paralympic Games – London/2012 in the news website globoesporte.com, focusing on the following themes/categories referred as common and problematic by the literature: (1) victimization/supercrip – when the news emphasize the athletes´ disabilities and how they overcame them, treating them as superheroes; infantilization – when there are expressions that treat athletes as if they were children; (3) trivialization – when the narrative focuses on information not related to sports. We chose these categories because the victimization/supercrip and the infantilization narratives tend reproduce stigmas related to people with disabilities. Narratives in sport journals which emphasize trivial information do not contribute to the comprehension of the Paralympic sport. The methodological approach was quanti-qualitative and exploratory. We chose the website globoesporte.com because of its popularity. We used the following descriptors: “paralimpíadas”, “paralímpico” e “paraolímpico”. We found 254 articles directly related to the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Thirty nine articles matched the supercrip category. They focused on stories about the overcoming of barriers related to disability and referred to athletes as heroes. Seven articles fit the infantilization category and treated the athletes as if they were children. Twenty articles fit the trivialization category. Instead of discussing sport related themes, they talked about athlete’s appearance, their personal lives and professional plans for the future. Even though there wasn´t a large number of publications that fit into the analyzed categories if we consider the total number of published articles reviewed, we found that there is a need of a better qualification of the media in order to cover Paralympic sport and Paralympic athletes so that it emphasizes less their disabilities and more their sporting abilities.