TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kotthaus, Jochem
A1  - Schäfer, Matthias
A1  - Stankovic, Nikola
A1  - Weitzel, Gerrit
T1  - How soccer becomes politics
BT  - a case study on the communication of a transnational popular media event
JF  - International journal of sport communication
N2  - In this case study, the authors elaborate on the narrative structure of transnational popular media events. Drawing from Dayan and Katz's concept of media events and Julia Sonnevend's exceptional work on iconic global media events, they argue that fundamental changes in the way occurrences are being reported on and news is structured must be considered. Allowing for recent technological advancements, the role of the consumer and the compression of time in media use, the authors develop a methodological and theoretical framework fitting a more mundane and everyday life-based approach. They derive their results from the analysis of the "Podgorica Media Event," a news cycle emerging from a racist incident during an international soccer game between England and Montenegro. Based on the body of 250 international news pieces, they identify a primary mother narration and a distinctive narration as the typical ways of storytelling on a transnational level. While differing greatly in content, aspects of transnational popular media events serve to protect and reify the cultural background they are grounded in on a national level. Thus, we assume that sport, or, more specifically, soccer, may become political in media communication not by the impact of state government but by the consumers themselves choosing and developing a popular media event in the first place.
KW  - banal nationalism
KW  - digital media
KW  - everyday life
KW  - prosumer
KW  - racism
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2020-0320
SN  - 1936-3915
SN  - 1936-3907
VL  - 14
IS  - 3
SP  - 428
EP  - 447
PB  - Human Kinetics Publ.
CY  - Champaign
ER  -