ABSTRACT
Manchester City and England Footballer Raheem Sterling is no stranger to the media spotlight ever since he became a professional. Sterling experienced crowd racism at Stamford Bridge in a match with Chelsea in December 2018 he used his Instagram to highlight the different press framing of two young Manchester City players buying houses, one white and one black (Sterling, 2018). This led to increased scrutiny of British journalism for its continued use of negative stereotypes about non-white players. Secondly, Sterling uses his media profile to campaign against racism. In a New York Times interview with eminent sport journalist Rory Smith (2019), he says that the way he is covered is ‘one million percent’ based on the colour of his skin (ibid.). This chapter utilises Sterling’s social media and media interviews to explore how he frames issues, such as racism, in a similar way to social movements (see Snow & Benford 1992, Sireau, 2009), to argue that the power of alternative platforms allows athletes to confront racism, and press stereotypes. Social media and athlete self-representation challenge the press’ communicative power by breaking and redistributing what Entman (1993) defined as the ‘imprint of power’ found in the press’ dominant framing of contentious issues.
