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Sports and Racialized Diasporas: A Transnational Comparative Study of News Media, FIFA, and Middle Eastern and African Diaspora support for Morocco in Europe, North America, and South America.
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a media content analysis examining how major newspapers in Europe and North and South America covered the sentiments of their African and Middle Eastern diaspora populations towards the Moroccan team after it qualified for the FIFA World Cup semi-finals. We know anecdotally that pride and support for the Moroccan team, the first African country to make the semi-finals, was high among these groups globally. The Moroccan team faced France in the semi-final game, and with a win, would have faced Argentina, both locations of large Arab and smaller Black African diasporas. The France-Morocco game pitted the representative team of a (former) colonial master against the representative team of a (former) colonial subject and current domestic subordinate. The methodology for this study is content analysis of major Anglophone presses (US, Canada, UK), Spanish language presses (Spain, selected South American) and Francophone presses (4 or 5 in France) over a two-week timeframe. In all of these cases the study asks: was diaspora support for Morocco covered in the press at all? If so, how was it spoken about — for example as a legitimate sign of pride, as a threat, as a sign of disloyalty to their new home? The narrative content of press coverage or lack thereof may be considered an indicator of how a diasporic group is viewed in the eyes of the dominant group, as expressed in mainstream news media. Notions of race and discourses about racialized populations frame the context for this study, although we expect some variation between and across Europe, North and South America, given their different histories and varied ideas about race. In sum, this is an interesting transnational comparative study on the ways in which diasporic and racialized populations are spoken about by the dominant media in the realm of sports.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Europe
North America
Other
Sub Area
None