Alina Bernstein

Sport and the Media: The Emergence of a Major Research Field

In the United States, according to Kinkema and Harris, ‘there are occasions when as many as ten sporting events are televised simultaneously’. 1 Many recent developments within mass sport have been guided by economic considerations that can easily be traced back to the media, and especially television. Sport for its part has also transformed the media. 2 The relationship between media and sport has become of particular interest to media scholars over the last decade. However, as sport itself has been of interest in a variety of other disciplines, the study of the ways in which media and sport interact crosses boundaries and can be found in literature concerned with the sociology of sport, history of sport, gender studies, cultural studies, journalism, leisure studies and beyond. For scholars interested in the media in particular, sport is important as a popular content of the media, which can also shed light on a range of related issues central to media studies. Much of the writing on sport and the media addresses general issues within media studies, such as the vast field of representation and identity (some commentators see sport’s most important contribution to society as symbolic) and globalization, as well as aspects of the political economy of the media (here the focus may well be institutional or economic, rather than concerned with symbolic processes). ‘Theory’ as a category is addressed explicitly at the end of this collection. Neil Blain suggests some approaches to theorizing the relationship between the symbolic functioning of sport and the domains of culture, and of media culture in particular. He argues that the symbolic development of sport is most satisfactorily comprehended when culture, sport, media, economics and ideology are all maintained as strong terms in the debate. This is an argument against compound constructions that subsume sport beneath the enveloping category of 1

‘Running Nowhere’: National Identity and Media Coverage of the Israeli Football Team's Attempt to Qualify for EURO 2000

The analysis in this essay is rooted in the on-going discussion in the literature regarding national identity, linking it specifically to mediated sport. In general, the study of media and sport has developed significantly since the beginning of the 1980s, expanding and diversifying in the 1990s. The sport–media relationship is of interest to scholars and researchers in a number of fields who approach the study of this relationship from varied perspectives. And yet a large theme within this field is that of representation, particularly the manner in which sport operates symbolically to produce ideological versions of collective identities, associated with locality and nationality (as well as gender, ethnicity and race). Many writers have shown that sport itself—much before the media become so intertwined with it—presents a unique opportunity for the construction of a collective identity consciousness. Norbert Elias notes that ‘sport continues to constitute an area of social activity in which overt emotional engagement remains publicly acceptable’ and he further observes that ‘a level of national sentiment’ can be found in the sports section of a newspaper which is hard to imagine elsewhere. Anthony Smith points out that ‘other types of collective identity—class, gender, race, religion—may overlap or combine with national identity but they rarely succeed in undermining its hold’. Most clearly, international sporting events—such as the Olympic Games, the Football World Cup and the European Football Championships—provide an opportunity for people to experience that elusive sense of national identity and belonging to their ‘imagined community’. Such events also serve as occasions for national ‘flag-waving’, and thus offer a perfect opportunity for the public fanning of nationalist sentiments. Indeed, ‘athletes and teams become our symbolic warriors defending

Bnei Sakhnin through the documentary looking glass: telling the story of Arab football in a Jewish state

Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin Football Club made history when it became the first Israeli club representing an Arab town to win the Israeli State Cup in May 2004. As part of a wider study, this essay looks at the documentary films produced in its aftermath. Analysis of these films shows how this unusual story highlights deeply embedded attitudes of the Jewish majority in Israel towards the Arab minority. It further highlights the fact that Israeli football is intertwined with national aspects since Jewish-Arab tensions are never far removed from the long-running and wider Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israeli national identity is never far removed from a religious (Jewish) identity. Moreover, it shows how a moment of unity between majority and minority quickly fell back to the deep separation of the Israeli national collective. All three documentaries, in varying ways, nevertheless express hope there might still be a chance of a brighter future for Israeli society.

Do they even know the national anthem? Minorities in service of the flag – Israeli Arabs in the national football team

This study sets out to explore prevalent attitudes amongst the Israeli-Jewish majority towards Arab footballers playing for Israel’s national team via an analysis of online reader comments (‘talkbacks’) posted by Jewish–Israeli readers to 360 online articles discussing the Israeli national football team between the years 2012–2014. Whilst some readers demonstrated a sense of support and empathy with the Arab players, the majority of Jewish–Israeli readers, however, showcased in their ‘talkbacks’ a persistent pattern of minimizing and underplaying Arab–Israeli footballers’ contribution to the national team. Despite the fact that some readers did warm to the prospect of having ‘their own Arab’ play for the national team (that is to say, an Arab footballer who also plays for the domestic team they support), most Jewish–Israeli readers continued to vocalize their protest over the ever-increasing number of Arab players in the Israeli national team.

Critical reading of talkbacks discourse as separatist integration: on the Israeli 2004 Football Cup victory

Abstract The historic victory of the Arab Bnei Sakhnin Union Football Club in the 2004 Israeli State Cup finals triggered an active public discourse about the Arab sector’s position in Israeli football and in Israeli society in general. The study’s premise is that the victory of an Arab club in the Jewish state’s National Cup games and the events surrounding it outside the football pitch are thematically inseparable. Content analysis of talkbacks on the Ynet online news site revealed the Israeli public discourse about the difficulties and complexities involved in the integration of Arab citizens in a Jewish state.