The Paralympic Games are a major athletic event, second only to the Olympic Games in terms of attendance. The research we did was part of a larger project looking into representations of disability and the development of impaired identity. Indeed, this work illustrates the differences and similarities that emerge from media coverage of the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Paralympic Games in French and Tunisian newspapers using a comparative method between two nations with two different cultures, France and Tunisia. There is a dearth of study on whether there are quantitative and qualitative disparities in the representation of female and male Paralympic athletes. The statistical analysis using the Chi-squared test, the content analysis of the discourse, and photo analysis, employed in this work, allowed us to get a first look at how impaired athletes are treated in Tunisia, an area that has previously been untapped. Second, to compare the findings with those of other researchers in the field. Results shows certain forms of discrimination between disabled and able-bodied athletes, but also between men and women in the two countries, in addition to the differences in treatment in the photos, in particular the way in which Tunisian women are exposed.

Bibliographie indicative : 

Buysse, J. A. M., & Borcherding, B. (2010). Framing gender and disability: A cross-cultural analysis of photographs from the 2008 Paralympic Games. International Journal of Sport Communication, 3(3), 308-321. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.3.3.308

De Léséleuc, E., Pappous, A., & Marcellini, A. (2010). The media coverage of female athletes with disability. Analysis of the daily press of four European countries during the 2000 Sidney Paralympic Games. European Journal for Sport and Society, 7(3–4), 283–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2010.11687863

Kim, K. T., Lee, S., & Oh, E.-S. (2017). Athletes with disabilities in the Paralympic Games: A framing analysis of television news. Managing Sport and Leisure, 22(4), 255–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/23750472.2018.1445976

Kolotouchkina, O., Llorente-Barroso, C., García-Guardia, M. L., & Pavón, J. (2020). Disability, Sport, and Television: Media Visibility and Representation of Paralympic Games in News Programs. Sustainability, 13(1), 256. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010256