The image of paralympic athletes in the Polish media on the example of “Przegląd Sportowy”

Abstract

One of the key components of the image of athletes is the media discourse. The media message reaching its recipients affects their perception of sport and people involved in it. This seems particularly important in the context of sports for people with disabilities due to a number of stereotypes attributed to people with disabilities in society. The image of para-athletes created in the media can have various consequences, and what largely determines them is the way media messages are formulated. The purpose of the following considerations is therefore to analyze sports articles with particular attention to the types of media used in writing about sports for people with disabilities. In the first part of the work, I wanted to present the specificity of parasport related to it, as well as the role played by the media in relation to the situation of para-athletes, including Paralympic athletes. Then, I described the research methods and tools that I used at the stage of analyzing press materials and selecting appropriate typologies. The last part contains the results of my analysis of press articles contained in 25 issues of “Przegląd Sportowy” from the period August 17, 2021–September 13, 2021, around the Paralympic Games in Tokyo on August 24, 2021–September 5, 2021.

Keywords

• paralympic games
• disability
• parasport
• paraathletes
• sport of people with disabilities
• paralympic athletes
• media discourse