Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Toward the end of his life, the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1996) observed how much Europe's map had changed since his birth.Of Polish descent, Hobsbawm regarded changing borders in Central and Eastern Europe as evocative testimonies to the power of 'invented traditions', the myths nations needed to live as ideas to which people could subscribe (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992).In December 2023, The Economist noted Donald Tusk's victory in the Polish general election against the incumbent Law and Justice Party would, by necessity, instigate a new era of national narration.One of the new Prime Minister's urgent tasks was to undo years of political discourse where racist populism stoked fears that Poland would cease to exist.The influential news magazine further noted that media influence had been central to the PiS' efforts to capture public common sense.Thus, examining how online football talk contributes to ideas about race and belonging in Poland is an essential topic in a year when populist thought will figure in multiple global elections.Tusk's elevation was globally significant as the 'black swan' apparently proving that populism is not an inexorable force.'Meanings given to race/ethnicity in everyday football talk' presents football as one of the places where young Poles construct race.The paper argues bigoted positions are easily adopted since match commentaries regularly trade in racist tropes.Thus, the study is relevant to the existential challenge facing Poland, Europe and indeed the world as an examination of the distinct role that particular media genres play in normalising racism.Media couple sporting performances and the bodies enacting them to ideas of racial difference that rationalise whiteness as the political centre.To further the project, it is worth paying more attention to the concept of the preferred reading and how that idea has been developed through studies of racism in media sports.As the authors rightly point out, Stuart Hall (2009) developed the idea to explain how media works politically.Whether in the news or elsewhere in popular culture, media furnish audiences with stories that offer lessons on how the world works.Such stories draw on dominant perceptions of why reality is as it is and what can or should be done about social issues.Audiences do not have to accept such accounts, but they do have to engage with them.Therefore, media power lies partly in the ability to present audiences with the same common sense time and time again, no matter what they
Author: Andy Ruddock
Institution: Monash University
Language: English
Topic: Sports, Gender, and Society
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4392769937