Anticipation, attack and applause: issue selection of newspaper coverage on hiddink and korean national football team

Introduction

Since the 2002 World Cup, Guus Hiddink, who was a director of Korean soccer team, had become a hero leading Korean team to the semifinal. And mass media praised him enthusiastically. His autobiography became a best seller, and numerous commercial films were created. So called "Hiddink Syndrome" hit the whole society. However, interests that the mass media had to him was not always positive from the first beginning. We thus set out to answer the following research questions; First, how the issue selection of coverage changes according to the results of Korean team? Second, is there an agreement or diversity in tendency of issue selection of each newspaper?

Methods

First we used agenda setting approach. It explores how mass media presented public issues to the people, and the way to ignore other issues bringing special issues into relief. Second, we used ’spinal of silence’ approach. It explores the agreement that the same kind of coverage showed in various media, and the accumulation that these coverage agreement showed continuously and over and over again. The data were collected sport coverage on Hiddink in three representative newspaper using the convenient sampling method. We conducted content analysis on the coverage issues.

Results

According to the remarkable results of the plays he had directed, mass media also focused on his persona, so that his personal life was often reported on the sports section of newspapers. So finally people to evaluate him according to his acts outside of the soccer ground that the mass media had reported, in fact he had been supposed to be evaluated not as a persona Hiddink but as a director Hiddink.

Discussion / Conclusion

This paper concludes; First, those coverage issues on his personal actions and private life were selected according to the results of Korean team. Second, reporting on Hiddink, issue selection tendency of each newspaper did not differ from others. This kind of coverage issues is not discovered only in the sports area. A mass media does not give any information that the people really need from all parts of the society. The common aspects of Korean mass media is that the public issuing of the fact by arbitrary decision. And these happen especially in the sports area where the result comes out significantly.

References

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