Abstract
Despite prevalent and widespread knowledge about the characteristic nature of heroes and celebrities, research that relates media framing of a hero and celebrity in the cricketing sports arena remains scant. Therefore, the central purpose of this research paper is to develop the academic understanding of this topic by focusing on the relationship between cricket players (from India and Sri Lanka) and the print media. The researchers use media framing stages of Entman (1993), developed upon by Giles (2008) as dependent variables and investigate the influence of dimensions of the frame building process applied by journalists (cognitive, rhetorical and ideological) on the stages, leading to the final news story frame. A high/low hero/ celebrity-performance/character ranking matrix frame is thus created for cricket players that tries to show how journalists frame a specific cricketer in comparison to his cricketing peer.
Highlights
Cricket and the MediaWhen commercialisation became an inseparable component in deciding the news priorities, sports in general and cricket, in particular, began to gain more media attention mainly because of the large amount of money involved
The cricketers are shown in media as nothing less than movie stars and since the iron-field success is equated with nationalistic pride, they are given the mantle of a national hero
The study seeks to prove that journalistic use of cognitive, rhetorical and ideological dimensions of framing influences the portrayal of the agency, identification as hero/celebrity, categorisation as performance or character-driven, generalisation in the context in which the frame is built and narrative style adopted by media
Summary
When commercialisation became an inseparable component in deciding the news priorities, sports in general and cricket, in particular, began to gain more media attention mainly because of the large amount of money involved. The bourgeoning public attention to cricket has made it a dynamic topic for media. It is this commercialisation that makes the experience of reading newspapers pleasurable. Market driven content is promoted by the media due to the shift in emphasis to profit prioritisation This has given life to new concepts like sensationalist and celebrity-driven journalism. Cricket was first played in 1721 in India and in the 1800’s in Sri Lanka. Sahajeewa’s (2015) study on sport journalism coverage in leading Sri Lankan newspapers Diwaina and Dinamina talks about the huge slant towards cricket as compared to other sports such as volleyball (the national sport), football and athletics. Sport in Sri Lanka is an indelible part of its national culture
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