Cricket heroes vs celebrities: assessing the role of media in framing Indian and Sri Lankan players using a Performance-Character Matrix

Abstract

Despite prevalent and widespread knowledge about the characteristic nature of heroes and celebrities, research that relates media framing of a hero and celebrity in the cricketing sports arena remains scant. Therefore, the central purpose of this research paper is to develop the academic understanding of this topic by focusing on the relationship between cricket players (from India and Sri Lanka) and the print media. The researchers use media framing stages of Entman (1993), developed upon by Giles (2008) as dependent variables and investigate the influence of dimensions of the frame building process applied by journalists (cognitive, rhetorical and ideological) on the stages, leading to the final news story frame. A high/low hero/ celebrity-performance/character ranking matrix frame is thus created for cricket players that tries to show how journalists frame a specific cricketer in comparison to his cricketing peer.