Sport & Exercise Research Group Seminar: Sport, Celebrity, Media and National Identity

Sports events are powerful vehicles for the construction, reproduction and, less frequently, the negotiation or contestation of national identity. The increasingly complex interplay between broadcast, print and new media is central to the ways in which sporting celebrities become emblematic of national identity and objects of collective emotional investment for committed and casual sports fans alike. Occasionally, competing perspectives on individuals and teams may highlight internal tensions and divides within the nation at key political and cultural conjunctures, as evidenced, for instance, by the England team’s ‘taking the knee’ protest at Euro 2020. With reference to selected Irish national and international sports celebrities, and drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, concepts and methods, this lecture explores the interplay between media representation and sporting celebrities’ self-presentation via social media in the construction, negotiation and contestation of national identity. It will focus particularly on how national identity intersects with gender and race.

Marcus Free is a lecturer in Media and Communication Studies in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and has worked previously in the universities of Sunderland and Wolverhampton. He has published widely in international journals and scholarly collections on the intersections of sport, gender, race and national identity in film, print and broadcast media. He is co-author of The Uses of Sport: A Critical Study (2005) and co-editor of Sport, the Media and Ireland: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2020).