Communication, sport, disability, and the (able)national

Authors: Silk, M., Pullen, E. and Jackson, D.

Editors: Butterworth, M.

Publisher: De Gruyter

Place of Publication: Berlin

DOI: 10.1515/9783110660883

Abstract:

Given the accelerated commodification of the Paralympic spectacle and the shift to what we have previously termed a ‘hyper-visibility’ of disability (Pullen et al., 2018), our focus within this chapter is on the media’s role in the social construction of disability and the production of Paralympic media texts as those through which political / national discourse can be traced. In so doing, we point to the state of play in understandings of, and relationships between, disability politics, Paralympic mediation, the contemporary neoliberal nation, and disability politics. Subsequently, through a focus on recent academic work, we look at the role of Paralympic media in defining which athletes are important, which disabilities/bodies are made hyper-visible — and thereby those which are marginalized or hypo-visible — through production practices that present productive, neoliberal, national disability icons whom inculcate particular, preferred, notions of disability and the (re-)imagined nation.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110660883/html

Source: Manual