Camaraderie or Competition? Media framing of the English and Spanish national teams during the UEFA Euro Football Tournament 2024

Absztrakt (kivonat)

International football tournaments are not only athletic spectacles but also powerful stages for the construction and negotiation of national identity, cultural values, and collective memory (Dumitriu, 2018; Doidge et al., 2019). However, there is a lack of extensive research specifically investigating how national teams are framed by the media, especially considering the cultural values that can influence these portrayals. Therefore, this thesis aims to shed light on how media outlets framed the English and Spanish national teams during UEFA Euro 2024, hosted in Germany, and how cultural differences shaped these narratives. The tournament provided an ideal context for a comparative analysis, as both England and Spain reached the final, offering an opportunity to examine how two countries with distinct footballing histories and traditions, and cultural backgrounds, were represented in the media throughout the whole tournament. With a content analysis on the frames employed by prominent English and Spanish news outlets, complemented by Instagram posts published on the official account of the event organizer (@euro2024), considering both the visual and textual elements of these posts, the research addresses three main research questions. Guided by Entman’s (1993) four-step analysis, the questions uncover the dominant frames present in the media coverage of the English and Spanish national teams, the salience of these frames within both traditional and social media narratives and explore how these framing practices influence audience perceptions of the two teams. Besides revealing the dominant frames, the study also explores how underlying cultural differences between England and Spain shape the construction of these narratives, relying on Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension theory (1984). Furthermore, the research provides insights into how media representations both reflect and shape public perceptions of national teams during a high-profile international tournament. This approach enables a nuanced understanding of the relationship between media framing, cultural context, and audience engagement, contributing to the broader literature on sports communication.