Media Representations of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games

Media Representations of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games

Harcup and O'Neill assert that news is not a universal truth, that it is constructed by journalists who work within broader frameworks. This understanding is inherent in every step of news production, from the selection of events that are newsworthy to the representation of the events through specific language choices. The Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games attracted substantive amounts of media attention and was therefore represented by the media in various ways. A discourse analysis of six texts produced by the print media to summarise and evaluate the Commonwealth Games reveals that news values and the defining features of a media event do not just effect decisions about what events are newsworthy. These aspects also influence the way that the event is represented in the media. In many of the texts the media portrays the Sydney Olympics overshadowing the Commonwealth Games. This demonstrates how the news value of negativity influences the ways the media represents an event. The texts also adhere to Dayan and Katz's understanding of the celebration of human achievement as a conquest. In this way descriptions of sports, particularly the marathon, adopt language that connotes battle and heroism. The texts also demonstrate how journalists and participants take on the language of primary definers, such as the organisers of the Commonwealth Games.

The Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games attracted much media attention. Over 3000 registered members of the media attended the Commonwealth Games (Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games Corporation). Galtung and Ruge's landmark study into news values and news selection reveals how events such as the Commonwealth Games become news (Harcup and O'Neill). Galtung and Ruge assert that events that comply with news factors are more likely to be newsworthy. These factors include: frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to persons, and negativity. The Commonwealth Games meets many of these factors. For example, they are held every four years and involve teams from over seventy different countries and territories including elite nations such as England (Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games Corporation). Because the running of the Commonwealth