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.
Highlights
Fifteen percent of the world’s population lives with some kind of disability [1], media representation of people with disabilities is still scarce and often anchored in stereotypes and social stigma [2,3]
Key research questions are aimed at identifying a specific focus and best practices put in place by RTVE to ensure visibility, understanding, and awareness of the Paralympic Games and its main protagonists
Julia Luna, RTVE’s sports journalist [60], argues that, for a long time Paralympic sport was considered a second-class sports category by the media, there has recently been a shift in perceptions, mainly on account of the visibility of the London 2012 Paralympic Games
Summary
Fifteen percent of the world’s population lives with some kind of disability [1], media representation of people with disabilities is still scarce and often anchored in stereotypes and social stigma [2,3]. Physical signs of difference related to disability result in prejudice, labeling, status loss, and discrimination [4]. Notwithstanding some exceptions such as the International Day of People with Disabilities or the World Down. Syndrome Day, which usually get brief mentions in media, or the occasional participation of people with disabilities in popular TV shows, disability is far from visible in the media on a global scale. In this regard, the recent global launch in over 190 countries of the Rising.
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