The PARA Project: Irish Media Coverage of Para sport
Background:
I began my journey in health and sport science by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Health and Performance Science at UCD. From there, I continued my studies at NUIG in Exercise Physiology and its Application in Therapy. Since graduating, I have applied my learning through clinical practice, amateur and elite sporting contexts. My time in clinical practice indirectly introduced me to the world of Para sport, the research area of my PhD. The research is part of The PARA (Para Athletics Research and Application) Project which is focusing on the current gateways and pathways in Para athletics and how we can improve them to ensure a pipeline of Irish Para athletes.
Current Topic:
One of the overarching aims of the PARA Project is to increase the awareness and visibility of Para sport. With Paris 2024 fast approaching, and the Paralympic games being the single most dominant representation of Para sport broadcast for popular consumption (Pullen E, et. Al, 2020), the PARA Project team decided to perform a surface level analysis of the media coverage dedicated to Para sport in Ireland.
For the purpose of the analysis, news articles were placed into one of three categories:
Main subject: Where Para sport or its athletes are the main subject of discussion
Secondary subject: Where there is some detail or mention of Para sport or Para athletes, but neither is the main subject
Not relevant: Where the subject of the article is unrelated to Para sport
The Irish Times
A search for “Para” on The Irish Times website, filtered to “sport” from 01/08/2020 (the month which should have seen the start of the 2020 Tokyo games; they actually ran from 24th August to 5th September 2021) until the date of the search, 12/06/2024, produced 87 results. The results were categorised as:
Main subject: 40 (46%)
Secondary subject: 40 (46%)
Not relevant: 7 (8%)
If we take this search result (of 87) into consideration and the number of months included in the search (46, August 2020 to June 2024) it calculates that an average of less than two sport articles a month published by the Irish Times covered Para sport. In comparison, a search for ‘sport’ with the same filters yielded 22,099 results.
The Irish Independent
For The Irish Independent, the same timeline and filter were applied when searching for the term “Para”, yielding 234 results. The articles were categorised as:
Main subject: 105 (45%)
Secondary subject: 53 (23%)
Not relevant: 76 (32%)
The Irish Independent have an entire subsection of their online sporting segment dedicated to the Olympics, a brief overview of which found minimal mention of the Paralympics. A portion of the disparity in Olympic versus Paralympic media reporting can be explained by the level of Irish representation at the games. For instance, the 2020 Olympic summer games saw 116 athletes represent Ireland while only 29 Irish athletes competed in the Paralympic games.
In comparison to the ‘Para’ search, when a search for ‘sport’ was run with the same filters, 10,000 articles were found. Interestingly, earlier this year, the Irish Independent published an article1 on the lack of representation of people with disabilities in the media. This article was in line with a 2022 report from Creative Diversity Network2 which revealed that representation of people with disabilities off-screen has been static or in decline, predicting it will take until 2041 for disabled talent to be truly representative in media.
The Literature
Three main reasons for the media to cover Para sport have been suggested (Antunovic D & Bundon A, 2022). These are: 1) the Paralympic games are an elite international sporting event so should have the same media traction as other elite international sporting events; 2) there is an ethical obligation to represent all abilities in sports media; 3) sport and social issues are intertwined and thus require contextualised reporting.
Despite the small number of studies on Paralympic media coverage within the literature (not to mention the ‘moderate’ quality of them) (Rees L, et. Al, 2017), there is an even smaller number of studies on Para sport media coverage outside of the Paralympic Games. So, it is no surprise that there is an onus on the Paralympics to inspire change in people with disabilities (Pullen E, et. Al, 2020). Despite the Paralympic games being run in ‘parallel’ to the Olympics, we do not see the same pressure put on Olympic games coverage to inspire those living without disabilities to engage in sport.
Recently, there has been some research into Irish Para sport media representation. Two studies in particular examined the thoughts of key stakeholders (Haslett D, et. Al, 2020) and athletes (Haslett D, et. Al, 2019) on Para athlete activism. Of 28 athletes interviewed, most stated that they were happy to be seen as creating positive change in the context of sport but would not tend to identify themselves as disability activists. One athlete in particular spoke about how just being a Para athlete lends itself to some form of disability activism without purposefully trying to partake in said activism (Haslett, D, et. Al, 2019).
The authors of the study concluded that media and culture should be at the forefront of disability activism as that is how change is implemented at a societal level, rather than individual interactions with people with disabilities. However, in contrast to this, a policy-led systematic review on the effects of the 2012 London games on physical activity in adults reported that previously, there has been no scientific evidence to support that major sporting events increase the uptake of physical activity (Weed M, et. Al, 2012). Additionally, a report on the amount of media coverage devoted to female athletes found that the 2012 London games had no impact on the amount of coverage of female athletes in mainstream media (the percentage of coverage devoted to this cohort is reported between 1- 6%) (Packer C, et. Al, 2015).
There is a need to be aware of the ‘hierarchy of disability’. This idea was coined from research into coverage of Tokyo 2020 which found a positive shift towards the representation of the athlete first, disability second, but also found underlying sub-themes of reducing athlete’s disability to the point of invisibility and highlighting certain types of disabilities over others (Page A, et. Al, 2024).
The complexity of reporting on Para sport gives rise to the idea of the Paralympic Paradox (Purdue DEJ & Howe PD, 2012) which can be described by two viewpoints: a) the Paralympics are an elite sporting event and should be treated as such, i.e, the focus should be on the level of athleticism the athletes have succeeded in reaching, and b) considering the Paralympics as a sporting event but with a background thought of the societal issues associated with disabilities.
Take-Homes and Applications:
There may be reason to investigate the reporting habits of Irish media on Para sport further, specifically, the style of reporting. Such an investigation was undertaken in Canada where 300 newspapers were analysed (Wolbring G & Martin B, 2018), and it was found that the supercrip narrative, including personal stories that fed into this narrative, and the comparison of Para athletes to non-disabled athletes were prevalent. The narrative of the ‘supercrip’ (AKA 'superhuman’) can result in non-athlete people with disabilities being marginalised further as elite Para athletes can be assumed to be the normal level of existence for people with disabilities (Shirazipour CH, et. Al, 2022). This misrepresentation could be explained, in part, by the lack of understanding and lived experience in Para sport by the presenters (Howe PD, 2008b; Misener L, 2013). Although the numbers discussed above paint a bleak picture, there is hope that they will improve as our national broadcaster, RTE, have stated that Paris 2024 will receive “the biggest and best coverage of a Paralympics to date”, promising to more than double the coverage of Rio 20163. Retrospective analyses of this media portrayal of Para sport could produce novel findings and improve our perceptions of disability.
References:
Pullen, E., Jackson, D., & Silk, M. (2020). Watching disability: UK audience perceptions of the Paralympics, equality and social change. European Journal of Communication, 35(5), 469-483
Antunovic, D., & Bundon, A. (2022). Media Coverage of the Paralympics: Recommendations for Sport Journalism Practice and Education. International Journal of Sport Communication, 15(1), 1-9. Retrieved Jun 18, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2021-0061.
Rees, L., Robinson, P., & Shields, N. (2017). Media portrayal of elite athletes with disability – a systematic review. Disability and Rehabilitation, 41(4), 374–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2017.1397775.
Haslett, D., Monforte, J., Choi, I., & Smith, B. (2020). Promoting Para Athlete Activism: Critical Insights From Key Stakeholders in Ireland. Sociology of Sport Journal, 37(4), 273-282. Retrieved Jun 18, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2019-0174.
Haslett, D., Choi, I., & Smith, B. (2019). Para athlete activism: A qualitative examination of disability activism through Paralympic sport in Ireland. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 47. 10.1016/j.psychsport.2019.101639.
Weed, M., Coren, E., Fiore, J., et Al. (2012) Developing a physical activity legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: a policy-led systematic review. Perspectives in Public Health, 132(2):75-80. doi:10.1177/1757913911435758.
Packer, C., Geh, D. J., Goulden, O. W., Jordan, A. M., Withers, G. K., Wagstaff, A. J., Bellwood, R. A., Binmore, C. L., & Webster, C. L. (2015). No lasting legacy: no change in reporting of women's sports in the British print media with the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Journal of public health (Oxford, England), 37(1), 50–56
Page, A., Daly, K., Anderson, J., & Thraves, G. (2024). Media representation and the Paralympics: a step too far or not far enough? Media International Australia, 190(1), 133-145. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221110275
Purdue, D. E. J., & Howe, P. D. (2012). See the sport, not the disability: exploring the Paralympic paradox. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 4(2), 189–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2012.685102
Wolbring, G., & Martin, B. (2018). Analysis of the Coverage of Paratriathlon and Paratriathletes in Canadian Newspapers. Sports (Basel, Switzerland), 6(3), 87. https://doi.org/10.3390/sports6030087
Shirazipour, C. H., Stone, R. C., Lithopoulos, A., Capaldi, J. M., & Latimer-Cheung, A. E. (2022). Examining the Impact of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games on Explicit Perceptions of Paralympians and Individuals with Disabilities. Health Communication, 38(8), 1501–1507. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2021.2017107
Howe, P. D. (2008b). From inside the newsroom: Paralympic media and the ‘production’ of elite disability. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 43(2), 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690208095376
Misener, L. (2013). A media frames analysis of the legacy discourse for the 2010 winter paralympic games. Communication & Sport, 1(4), 342–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479512469354
Links
3: https://sportforbusiness.com/rte-doubling-coverage-of-paralympic-games/
Annmarie Carroll is undertaking her PhD as part of the PARA (Para Athletics Research and Application) Project, a jointly funded collaboration between UCD Institute of Sport and Health and Sport Ireland. The project sees further collaboration with Paralympics Ireland and Athletics Ireland. The PhD commenced in April 2024.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annmarie-carroll-68232b172