Toni Bruce

Bending the rules: media representations of gender during an international sporting event.

Extensive qualitative research shows that, even at its best, media coverage of women athletes tends to be ambivalent, meaning that it juxtaposes positive descriptions and images with descriptions and images that undermine and trivialize women’s efforts and successes. However, researchers have rarely explored the implications of nationalism — in particular during global sports events — for coverage of women’s sport. This analysis of media coverage of Cathy Freeman during the Sydney 2000 Olympics points to an instance in which gender lost its place as the primary media framing device because of Freeman’s importance as a symbol of national reconciliation.

The power of stereotypes: Anchoring images through language in live sports broadcasts

Televised sport offers a rich context for investigating the processes that influence particular uses of language. Here, the authors consider how pressure on sport commentators to connect with audiences results in reliance on preestablished narratives that draw heavily on stereotypes. They investigate how television sport commentators negotiate tensions between stereotypes of a particular country’s playing style and on-field action that challenges those stereotypes. Their interdisciplinary approach—drawing from social psychology, communication, media studies, sport studies, and cultural studies—provides a textual analysis of New Zealand commentary in a pivotal Rugby World Cup game between France and New Zealand. The authors identify three different ways in which national stereotypes lead commentators to produce interpretations that do not always accurately represent the action on the field. They conclude that sport commentary in an international context operates to create and reinscribe symbolic differences between nations, even in the face of visual evidence that is ambiguous or actively contradicts the words used to describe it. The analysis demonstrates how powerfully national stereotypes influence commentators’ representational choices.

Sportswomen and social media: bringing third-wave feminism, postfeminism, and neoliberal feminism into conversation

In this article, we take seriously the challenges of making sense of a sporting (and media) context that increasingly engages female athletes as active, visible, and autonomous, while inequalities pertaining to gender, sexuality, race, and class remain stubbornly persistent across sport institutions and practices. We do so by engaging with three recent feminist critiques that have sought to respond to the changing operations of gender relations and the articulation of gendered subjectivities, namely, third-wave feminism, postfeminism, and neoliberal feminism, and applying each to the same concrete setting—the social media self-representation of Hawaiian professional surfer Alana Blanchard. In aiming to conceptually illustrate the utility of these three feminist critiques, we are not advocating for any single approach. Rather, we critically demonstrate what each offers for explaining how current discourses are being internalized, embodied, and practiced by young (sports)women, as they make meaning of, and respond to, the conditions of their lives.

Winning Space in Sport: The Olympics in the New Zealand Sports Media

In this chapter, I draw on feminist cultural studies theorising to explore the ways in which the Olympic Games may become a site where female athletes claim centre stage in the media and public imagination. The analysis is underpinned by Proctor’s (2004) argument that cultural studies research involves ‘exposing the relations of power that exist within society at any given moment in order to consider how marginal, or subordinate groups might secure or win, however temporarily, cultural space from the dominant group’ (p. 2). Thus, the focus is on a rare moment when sportswomen, a marginal group within the broader culture of sport, are able temporarily to win space for themselves in the mainstream media. While newspaper coverage of New Zealand’s three female medallists at the 2004 Olympic Games is the empirical basis for the analysis, my focus is on exploring the articulations and relations of power that create the opportunity for such visibility.

Rethinking global sports migration and forms of transnational, cosmopolitan and diasporic belonging: a case study of international yachtsman Sir Peter Blake

The increasingly global dispersion of elite athletes pursuing sporting careers is an important aspect of the global flow of sport-capital. Such sport migration lends itself to theorising that considers questions about attachment to place, particularly in relation to citizenship, identity and nationalism. Yet only recently have theoretically valuable concepts such as transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and diaspora been foregrounded in studies of sporting migrants. Based on an analysis of British and New Zealand media coverage of international yachtsman Sir Peter Blakes death, we analyse the overlapping forms of identity attributed to this apparently model transnational citizen. We conclude that this case study raises important questions about the multiplicity of identities in a globalised world and expands our understandings of diaspora beyond the classic focus on forced dispersal and non-dominant racial groups.

Ethical explorations: a tale of preparing a conference paper

In this article, the author explores the ethical tensions that emerged when she attempted to write autoethnographically about her ongoing experience of early menopause. It brings to life the journey that resulted from the acceptance of a conference abstract which promised to reveal the lived experience of this unexpected bodily “betrayal.” The abstract included the promise to illuminate the intense physical and emotional effects of this (in)visible transition. However, in the process of writing and considering the ethical dimensions of such storytelling, the author ended up constructing something completely different which, in its own way, led to new understandings of her past and present.

The Olympics and Indigenous Peoples: Australia

In this chapter, we consider the implications of the mainstream media positioning of Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman as the hope for a racially reconciled Australia during the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Given the historic articulation of Australian nationalism to whiteness and masculinity, it is remarkable that a young Aboriginal woman claimed such a central place in media coverage of this global event.1 Freeman was undoubtedly the face of the Games, the individual around whom imaginings of a racially reconciled Australia coalesced.2 During the Games she became, to paraphrase Raymond Williams, an operative historical force symbolising Australia’s vision of itself.3

Towards Cultural Competence: How Incorporating Māori Values Could Benefit New Zealand Sport

Abstract Purpose – This chapter investigates how being Māori influences the sport experiences of Māori participants, and offers a critical Māori perspective on mainstream New Zealand sport. It argues for the value of moving towards a culturally competent approach that embraces, rather than resists, Māori tikanga and practices. Design/methodology/approach – The research is driven by an Indigenous kaupapa Māori research methodology that privileges research by Māori, about Māori, being Māori. Ten highly experienced Māori participants were interviewed. The cultural competence continuum was employed to assess New Zealand sport’s ability to meet the needs of its indigenous peoples. Findings – For the Māori participants, mainstream sport reflects the echoes of colonial ways of thinking that frequently ignore or devalue Māori values or interpret assertions of self-determination as separatist and divisive. Using examples from the participants’ experiences, we argue that cultural competence is something that could benefit all in New Zealand sport. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of a small sample are addressed by triangulating the participants’ perspectives with other sources of information about Maori sporting experience. Originality/value – The chapter privileges a Māori critique of existing structures and suggests a way forward that could positively influence sport delivery for Māori and people of all ethnicities.