Governing Paralympians: A Media Discourse Analysis of Disability and Gender in China

2025/08/04 by Lanfei Wang, Bryan C. Clift, Bonnie Pang +1 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Disability Rights and Representation #Inclusion and Disability in Education and Sport #Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics

paper · doi:10.1177/21674795251364564

openalex publication_date 2025/08/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

This paper uses Foucauldian-influenced discourse analysis to explore the governance of disability and gender in Chinese print media during the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. Drawing on 38 articles published in China Daily , a state-affiliated newspaper, this study examines the media representations of Paralympians and, more importantly, the ways in which gendered and disabled subject positions are constituted, negotiated, and regulated. The analysis illustrates how ableism and sexism persist in representations of Paralympians under the guise of neoliberal governance and heterosexual assumptions. In addition, Chinese para-athletes are particularly disciplined by normative, state-sanctioned gender ideals within a prevailing atmosphere of nationalism. Overall, this study offers a critique of discursive strategies of inclusionism in Chinese media practices at the intersection of gender and disability.

Citations

• Chinese Masculinities Revisited: Male Images in Contemporary Television Drama Serials
• Dis/entangling critical disability studies
• The Subject and Power
• Female athletes' self-representation on social media: A feminist analysis of neoliberal marketing strategies in “economies of visibility”
• A New Age for Media Coverage of Women’s Sport? An Analysis of English Media Coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup
• Provocations for Critical Disability Studies
• SEPARATING THE MEN FROM THE GIRLS:
• Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain
• Models of disability

Discussions

• Open-access poststructuralist discourse analysis of the governance of disability and gender in Chinese print media: "Governing Paralympians: A Media Discourse Analysis of Disability and Gender in Chin [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]