Page 30 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

Analysing Media Sport • 19

the body/spirit split is mapped onto dualities within class and gender. The
working-class male is seen as corporeal, gross, eructating: the middle class is

more spiritual, more refined but looks with envy and a certain excitement at the
physical carnival enacted by men such as Gazza. Gazza’s body and personality
become a text which is alienated from him, in fact becomes public property, upon
which can be inscribed various messages. (p. 163)

The magazine cover image evoked both sadness and inevitability in the ordinariness
of the image, perhaps confirming the feelings of class superiority among the reader-

ship, which might have been challenged by the capacity of seemingly undisciplined
footballers such as Gascoigne to display such immense sporting talent in a desir-
able and lucrative profession. However, to understand further the cultural politics of
media imagery, it is necessary to go beyond the analysis of what is being represented
to the way those representations position the viewing subject. To do this, we need to
consider how the sport media is constructed as discourse.

Sport as Discourses

There is a connection between the systems of meaning Barthes (1993) described as
‘myths’ and Foucault’s (1972, 1977, 1978) analysis of the operation of discourse.
Foucault understood discourse not so much as a set of signs constituting a text, but as
practices, institutions and spaces through which regulatory power operates to enable
what can be said, what (social, moral, political) positions can be adopted and what
meanings can be ascribed to events, texts and objects. Discourses can be detected
in the repeated ways in which an event is framed and the effect of that framing on
individuals’ behaviour, thoughts and opinions. An example might be the discourse
of fair play in competitive sport. The media repeatedly invoke the spirit of fairness
when constructing stories about sport. The notion of fair play has effects on play-
ers’ behaviour and frames the way the action is perceived by the audience and par-
ticipants. However, there is a great deal of complexity and contradiction inherent in
discourse. Discourse is powerful because it absorbs contradiction, enabling multiple
positions or arguments to be made within its terms. For example, the notion of fair
play appears to exist unproblematically alongside evidence of glaring inequalities in
resources available to different teams or players, and professional imperatives to win
at all costs (hence the acceptance of the professional foul).
Discourse is, therefore, a way of knowing—one that has an effect in the world.
The connections between truth, power and knowledge are critical to understanding
the effects of discourse. The power of discourse lies in its assumptions and claims
that the knowledge it constructs is the truth. Knowledge and power, therefore, are
intimately connected: ‘all knowledge is discursive and all discourse is saturated with
power’ (Rose 2001: 138). The intersection of discourses of gender and sport make