Informing Future Paralympic Media Approaches: The Perspective of Canadian Paralympic Athletes

Abstract

Media coverage of the Paralympic Games can affect how athletes with impairment and disability sport are perceived by the public. Researchers investigating media representations of disability sport have focused on how Paralympic athletes and disability sport are represented by the media. Limited research, however, has examined how Paralympic athletes perceive these representations of themselves and the meanings they attribute to such representations. The purpose of this study was to examine how Paralympic athletes make meaning of discourses of disability within Paralympic coverage. This involved semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews with eight Canadian Paralympic athletes. A reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) was used to analyze the data utilizing Foucault’s notions of discourse, power, and technologies of the self. The findings demonstrate that Paralympic athletes made meaning of the discourses of disability within Paralympic media coverage by drawing on their lived and media experiences. Athletes with more media experience articulated problematizations of dominant discourses of disability in Paralympic media coverage and engagement in technologies of the self. Knowledge generated from this study offers media personnel an informed understanding of how Paralympic athletes understand representations of disability and disability sport. This knowledge may offer insight and inform future media approaches of disability sport and the Paralympic Games.