Question

Explain how sport personalities are portrayed by media and how the portrayal influence people?

Answer 1

Sport personalities are portrayed by media as heroes.

They are usually very rich and they enjoy a lifestyle full of pleasant things reserved for the wealthy only. They participate in a lot of media campaigns promoting sports or non-sports related gadgets or events. They are often seen as lucky and as people who got everything right in their lives.

Hardly ever they are referred to as hard working or strapped for money.

This portrayal may influence a lot of people in a negative way. Young people may look up to them as role models, which implies their value systems would be based on materialistic things only. People would think that the life of sport personalities is the one everybody is trying to copy, thus abandoning their own ideas of happiness.

Answer 2

Sport personalities tend to gain a lot of media attention. Audiences participating in said sport could idolize these sports personalities, this idolization can lead to misrepresentation.