White is the new black? Football, media and the New Zealand imagination

Abstract

This paper interrogates the media articulation of football/soccer to New Zealand national consciousness during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. 541 articles from national and regional newspapers and Internet news sites were gathered and analysed using a critically discursive approach. I argue that the press re-framed football within the national sporting imagination in the context of a narcissistic nationalism. Coverage was underpinned by several interlocking themes. First, falsely positing football as ethnically inclusive by emphasizing Māori players’ presence in the national team. Second, the entrenchment of archetypes and caricatures of both others and the national self. This included the evocation of a mythic New Zealand masculinity, with specific individuals lionized as key embodiments of the fictive national character. Third, the caricaturing of other nationalities is also used to bolster the national self – in particular the Italians and Australians. Such framings resonate with long-standing themes in the selective construction of a settler-informed New Zealand nationalism. Coverage, however, ignores the complexity of how individuals are flexibly and ambiguously articulated to the nation, particularly in the context of the global football labour market.