How do audiences of televised English football construct difference based on race/ethnicity?

Abstract

Our study analyses media audiences of football within the English context. The research question can be formulated as follows: How do young people at a Northern-England university interpret and (re)construct discourses surrounding race/ethnicity in men’s televised football? Results from our focus groups with young football media audiences show how they take a relatively race-conscious perspective in comparison to most earlier studies. At the same time, football talk appears a complex space where racialized discourses are rejected as well as accepted and where meanings given to race and ethnicity intersect with other markers of difference such as culture and nationality.