Dr. Tatiane Hilgemberg
Assistant Professor in Communication and a researcher at Roraima Federal University, Brazil. She received her doctorate in Communication from State University of Rio de Janeiro and her master’s in communication science from Porto University. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2023. Her research interests include Disability Studies and Sports, Stereotypes, Minorities and the Media.
Email: tatiane.hilgemberg@ufrr.br
On August 2nd 2024 a little bit more than a week after the Paris Olympic Games started, Brazil won its first gold medal. Beatriz Souza, ‘Bia’ Souza as she became known, a Brazilian judoka in her first Olympic Games was responsible for the achievement. A black woman won Brazil’s first gold medal in Paris in a sport that has not been receiving much media attention. However, the ‘buzz’ that came next was expected taking into consideration the value of a gold medal.
Almost immediately after the result four of the major Brazilian news websites (Globo.com, Folha, Estadão and O Globo) celebrated the information with Beatriz pictures followed by headlines such as “Brazil’s first gold medal”. A few hours later these same news websites had published full stories about the athlete and the gold medal: “Bia cries when talking to her family: ‘This was for grandma’”, “‘Since she was 6 years old it was only Judo in her life’, says Bia’s mother”, “Brazil’s first gold medal was a judo fairy tale”. Globo, the network which owned the rights to broadcast the Olympic Games, published five stories on its website, all of which had photos and videos that showed Beatriz’s fight, and her celebration on the podium. The news also focused on Beatriz as the first woman to win a gold medal in her first Olympic Games for Brazil, and in most of the stories the journalist reminded us of how much of an accomplishment this was.
A few weeks later, on August 29th 2024, less than 24 hours after the Paralympic Games started, the Brazilian swimmer Gabriel Araújo, known as Gabrielzinho, won the country’s first Paralympic gold medal of the Paris Games. But the silence was brutal. It took some time for the same websites to publish his result. More specifically Globo.com posted five full stories, but only two had Gabriel as a headline – one focused on general results of the Games’ first day, and one focused on the fact that Lula, Brazil’s president, had congratulated Gabriel – and only one celebrated the first gold medal: “Gabrielzinho won the first gold for Brazil at the Paralympics”. The news focused only on the results, photos and videos showed Gabriel swimming, celebrating in the pool and on the podium, but several made Gabriel’s disability invisible, and in three of the four news stories his disability was explained, with his achievements taking a back seat.
The whole Paralympic Games suffered from this silence and underrepresentation, which was highly criticized. Globo, the Brazilian TV channel responsible for broadcasting the event, offered to its viewers only highlights of the Games and the results of Brazilian athletes. SporTV, the Brazilian main channel on paid TV owned by Globo, had four different channels completely dedicated to the Olympic Games; during the Paralympic Games only one channel was responsible for the transmission. Adding to it there was little coverage from print media and news websites.
When the Paralympic Games and athletes are underrepresented in the media, as we concluded in the Olympic and Paralympic Analysis 2020, the Paralympic Games is seen as a second-class event by the media. Developing this conclusion, we can state that not only the event, but the athletes with disabilities are considered second-class individuals. This bias not only affects how Paralympians are viewed by society but also impacts their opportunities for sponsorship and public recognition.
If, on the one hand, people with disabilities are victims of a dominant ableist discourse, mainly by traditional media, that reinforce ideologies, frame certain aspects and bring its audience a symbolic network of meanings that organizes the social world, on the other hand, social media allows people with disabilities to interact directly with society, with the possibility of agreeing with, opposing or complementing what is disclosed by traditional media.
Social media is an important platform, especially for athletes. Before the gold medal Beatriz had 13,000 followers on Instagram, a few minutes later this number increased to more than 400,000 and by the end of the day she had more than 1 million followers. In addition, after the Olympic Games Beatriz was invited by many TV shows, from talk show to cooking programs, and even her husband starred in an advertising campaign.
The lack of visibility had an impact also on social media. While Bia increased her Instagram follower by almost 8 times, Gabriel only doubled his numbers, reaching 421,000 followers by the end of the Paralympics after three gold medals and two world records. At the time of writing, he has yet to be invited to join TV shows and commercials.
On a more tangible level, while Beatriz Souza received from the Brazilian Olympic Committee 350,000 Reais (approximately 63,000 dollars), Gabriel Araújo received 250,000 Reais (approximately 45,000 dollars) from the Brazilian Paralympic Committee, making the gap between the two events even more clear.
