Racism, football, and news media: A critical discourse analysis of the news on football players with a migration background in Germany

This thesis examines the German media's racist discourse on football players with migration backgrounds in German football. Using Van Dijk's critical discourse analysis method specific to racism, this thesis presents a comprehensive range of research of 1012 news stories from five online newspapers and news magazines with different political orientations and ownerships in Germany on the racist discourse about the black and Turkish-German football players between 2016 and 2021. This thesis employs Balibar's "new racism," which bases on the core idea of 'racism without race' that expands racism regarding contemporary debates towards nationality, culture, ethnicity, and religion. Thus, besides a clear, explicit racist discourse, hidden concepts and discourses in German media were revealed, and a comprehensive racist discourse analysis of German news media is presented for the selected football players in German football within a critical perspective.