European Public Service Media, Disability Sports and Cultural Citizenship in the Digital Age: An Analysis of Agenda Diversity in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games

Citation: Ramon, Xavier, and José Luis Rojas-Torrijos. 2023. European Public Service Media, Disability Sports and Cultural Citizenship in the Digital Age: An Analysis of Agenda Diversity in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Journalism and Media 4: 289–303. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/journalmedia4010020 Academic Editor: Andreu Casero-Ripollés Received: 24 January 2023 Revised: 14 February 2023 Accepted: 15 February 2023 Published: 17 February 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Article European Public Service Media, Disability Sports and Cultural Citizenship in the Digital Age: An Analysis of Agenda Diversity in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games Xavier Ramon 1,* and JoséLuis Rojas-Torrijos 2 1Department of Communication, Pompeu Fabra University, 08018 Barcelona, Spain 2Department of Journalism II, University of Seville, 41092 Seville, Spain *Correspondence: xavier[email protected] Abstract: In the current cross-media ecosystem, which is characterized by technological disruption, the prominent relationship between public service media (PSM), sport and cultural citizenship is undergoing a profound transformation. Currently, PSM can utilize its myriad platforms, channels and services to transcend the constraints of linear broadcasting, find new ways of advancing diversity and overcome the perception of disability sport as a media ‘blind spot’. Through content analysis, the objective of this research has been to examine the agenda diversity on Twitter offered during the timeframe of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games by 15 PSM corporations in Europe. This comparative analysis of 6072 tweets demonstrated the uneven attention devoted by European PSM to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. In the aggregate, 39.42% (n = 2398) of the messages focused on the event, although significant imbalances can be observed among the different media organizations, both in terms of the volume of coverage and the attention given to the various Paralympic disciplines and protagonists. From a theoretical perspective, the article adds to the existing literature on the nexus between media, sport and cultural citizenship, signaling the need for PSM to reimagine its social media strategies to counteract the limited visibility of different societal groups and to adequately contribute to enhancing cultural citizenship in the digital age. The results can also inform media practitioners. Despite that the conditioning factors and trade-offs linked to the commercial nature of social networking sites cannot be overlooked, PSM should take into account the importance of promoting inclusion and observe audiences’ increasing interest in disability sport. Keywords: public service media; sports; cultural citizenship; sports media; sports journalism; disability; Tokyo 2020; Paralympics; diversity; Twitter 1. Introduction In the current cross-media ecosystem, which is characterized by technological disruption and the proliferation of digital channels and platforms (Glebova et al. 2022;Zheng and Mason 2022), the core relationship between public service media (PSM), sport and cultural citizenship is undergoing a profound transformation. In contrast to private sector media, PSM refers to organizations that are “publicly funded, less commercially driven and have a distinct public service mission” (Sehl and Cornia 2021, p. 1470). This public service mission is based on crucial obligations and values such as diversity, innovation, independence, excellence, universality, accountability, media literacy and social justice (Cañedo et al. 2022). Founded as radio and television entities, Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) have transitioned into PSM over the last few years, “meaning that its contents are no longer distributed only through radio and TV (broadcasting), but through all possible platforms, especially the Internet” (Sehl 2023, p. 3). Throughout history, PSM has played a unique role in building and developing cultural citizenship through sports (Røssland 2017;Scherer and Sam 2012;Smith 2017;Taylor and Thomass 2017). The news coverage of sports through different formats, as well as the Journal. Media 2023,4, 289–303. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4010020 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/journalmedia Journal. Media 2023,4290 free-to-air broadcasting of national and international competitions, has long allowed PSM to achieve “mass attention and thereby, public legitimacy” (Lünich et al. 2021, p. 289), while offering citizens the opportunity to fully participate “in the collectively oriented public culture environments that constitute the social” (Hutchins et al. 2019, p. 989). In the process, public broadcasters have played a crucial role in creating and sustaining the cultural heritage of nations in relation to sport (Ramon and Haynes 2019). Thus, the strategies, practices and output delivered by PSM have been essential in preserving “the rights and responsibilities regarding access to and representation in, sports culture” (Rowe 2018, p. 12), which are deeply embedded in the notions of cultural citizenship. Nevertheless, PSM’s use of sports content to enhance cultural citizenship through linear broadcasting is increasingly threatened by the significant tensions and pressures that arise from digitization, globalization and commodification (Hesmondhalgh and Lotz 2020). Around the world, the escalating costs of sports broadcasting rights is threatening the provision of free-to-air content (Smith 2017). Major events legislation is still in force in many countries to “ensure that citizens are able to engage with these culturally significant occurrences” (Phillips and Martin 2020, p. 587). However, the expansion of over-the- top and on-demand services has deeply complicated the regulation of the digital sport broadcasting market, while raising important concerns about the future preservation of cultural citizen rights (Evens and Smith 2022;Rowe et al. 2022). In this troubled context, PSM can utilize its myriad platforms and services to transcend the constraints of linear broadcasting and find new ways of advancing cultural citizenship (Hermes 2020). Digital spaces provide new opportunities for PSM to promote diverse and inclusive coverage that gives a broader recognition to those areas, topics and voices that are “often neglected by the commercial media” (Cwynar 2017, p. 135). New destinations can help PSM to provide “variation in content” (Morlandstø and Mathisen 2022, p. 2) and make various “societal groups visible” (Steiner et al. 2019, p. 102). In the field of sports, modern digital technologies have significantly altered the way in which sport is globally transmitted and consumed, offering new opportunities for flexibility and inclusivity (Glebova et al. 2022). Particularly, digital technologies can bring “less prominent professional or even recreational sports to the forefront” (Zheng and Mason 2022, p. 8) and “make it easier to give visibility to groups or initiatives that previously did not have access to distribution channels” (Glebova et al. 2022, p. 5). Thus, digital platforms—including social media—can be instrumental in showcasing “traditionally underrepresented sports and protagonists, including sportswomen and athletes with disabilities” (Ramon and Rojas-Torrijos 2022, p. 919). Focusing on the latter issue, for many public and privately-owned media organizations, disability sport has “not been considered relevant, important, interesting, accessible or timely enough to be routinely prioritized on the broadly mediated agenda” (Sjøvaag and Kvalheim 2019, p. 292). For such reasons, disability sport can indeed be considered a media ‘blind spot’ (Morlandstø and Mathisen 2022). The proliferation of platforms and channels “affords a degree of cultural oxygen” (Goode 2010, p. 533) for athletes with disabilities, who remain far less visible in the media than their able-bodied counterparts (Brittain 2017; Solves et al. 2019). However, as is rightly noted by Goode (Goode 2010, p. 532), new media destinations do not automatically ‘translate into a guarantee of greater visibility or recognition’ for all social groups. Previous research on the use of sports-centered Twitter accounts by European PSMs such as the BBC, RTVÉ, RAI, FranceTV and RTÉdemonstrated that platforms such as Twitter offer new opportunities to deliver high-quality sports content and engage with new audiences (Ramon and Rojas-Torrijos 2022;Rojas-Torrijos and Ramon 2021). Nevertheless, the findings also indicated that content for disability sport offered by PSM sports desks remains remarkably scarce, demonstrating “a continued lack of agenda diversity in routine digital media coverage” (Antunovic and Bartoluci 2023, p. 170). Considering the power of media narratives to shape society’s perceptions of disability, important questions arise: beyond routine coverage, are social media platforms being Journal. Media 2023,4291 leveraged by PSM to lend recognition to athletes with impairments during major megaevents, such as the Paralympic Games? Does content during the Paralympics help raise awareness of the diverse Paralympic disciplines and protagonists and, therefore, contribute to an enhancement of cultural citizenship? Bearing these questions in mind, the purpose of this study was to examine the agenda diversity on Twitter offered during the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games by 15 PSM corporations in Europe. The article first provides an overview of the media coverage of disability sport and scrutinize the best practices involved in the reporting of the most recent Paralympic Games. Our attention will then turn to the affordances provided by new platforms and social media channels to improve the visibility of athletes with any sort of impairment. Our analysis of 6072 tweets considers the unequal attention devoted by European PSM during the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, both in terms of the volume of coverage and the attention given to the different Paralympic disciplines and protagonists. The results have clear implications for media practice, signaling the need for PSM to reimagine its social media strategies to counteract the limited visibility of disability sport and adequately contribute to enhancing cultural citizenship in the digital age. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Media Coverage of Disability Sport and the Paralympics According to the literature review of the existing research on the coverage of disability sport, it can be noted that, with a few exceptions, the visibility and representation of people with disabilities can still be considered scarce. This situation reinforces the idea that disability sport remains a media ‘blind spot’ (Morlandstø and Mathisen 2022;Sjøvaag and Kvalheim 2019). As Brittain (2017) asserts, “a lack of understanding towards and coverage of, disability issues within the media is not limited to just disability sport, but to disability in general” (p. 242). Despite the growing interest in media and sport and the large number of studies of media and the Olympics over recent years, disability has remained “almost entirely invisible in the mainstream of this scholarship” for many years (Goggin and Newell 2000, p. 73). The intersection of disability and mass media, however, is increasingly resonating as a crucial topic in the modern world, precipitating the expansion of research and publications on disability across many scholarly disciplines (Ellis and Goggin 2015). As a consequence of this growing concern around disability, research focus has shifted over time from traditional media studies to other interdisciplinary approaches, enabling a deeper understanding of the nature of disability and its visibility in the media-sport world. In this context, “media-focused scholarship has identified different ways that sport articulates, perpetuates and can challenge ableist views of disabled bodies” (Cherney et al. 2015, p. 9). One of the main conclusions reached by several authors is that sports media outlets have been complicit in perpetuating those ableist narratives in their coverage of disability and disability sport events that are commonly associated with perceptions of inferior ability and performance (Pullen et al. 2019) and with representations of what has been termed a ‘supercrip’ narrative about the athlete heroically overcoming the barriers posed by a disability (McGillivray et al. 2021). Despite these perceptions, recent media coverage of athletes with impairments has evolved from traditional to progressive (Schantz and Gilbert 2008). As noted by Pate and Hardin (2013), progressive coverage, which is more focused on abilities and athletic accomplishments than on disabilities and overcoming adversities, is an example of the best media practice when reporting on the Paralympics and other disability sport events, as is the case for the best coverage of able-bodied sport. Unlike other sporting competitions, the Paralympics stands out as a global sports mega-event that receives ever-increasing media attention and, consequently, plays a key political and cultural role in showcasing athletes with impairments, leaving stereotypes behind and, ultimately, in changing people’s attitudes about disability (Kolotouchkina et al. 2020). As a result of this, the extraordinary and hyper-visible achievements of Paralympic Journal. Media 2023,4292 athletes emerge in discourses of national identity (Bruce 2014), in which the enhanced abilities of disabled bodies have become socially accepted and politically celebrated as symbols of inclusion and integration (Howe 2008). It is widely agreed that London 2012 proved to be “a game-changing moment in the history of Paralympics sports coverage” (Bradshaw and Minogue 2019, p. 145), thanks to unprecedented media exposure and, most notably, the dedicated approach of the official broadcaster, Channel 4, to promote both the event and its main protagonists (Pullen et al. 2020b). This coverage brought disability sport into the mainstream, impacted citizens’ perceptions of Paralympic athletes and elevated the profile of the Games as an elite sporting event by capturing huge audience numbers (a 400% increase since the 2008 Beijing Paralympics) and also establishing its commercial success (Pullen et al. 2022, p. 369). Since London 2012, the level of coverage of the Paralympic Games has been on the rise, but the amount and quality of this coverage varies greatly among territories and even within different media outlets in the same country (Brittain 2017). After parasports claimed space in high-impact sports news during the Rio 2016 Paralympics (Menezes dos Santos et al. 2022), the technologically enhanced media coverage of Tokyo 2020 “crossed-over to mainstream audiences more often and in more interesting ways, than previous Games” (Goggin and Hutchins 2021, p. 136). Pullen et al. (2021, p. 82) refer to these Paralympic Games as “the most digitally accessible and savvy” because of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) strategy that focused on providing live streams of events on its own Paralympic mobile app, as well as on YouTube and Facebook, and delivered extra content on social media such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok in a bid to reach younger audiences. Although there have been signs of improvement in media representations of the Paralympics since London 2012, some studies note that the quantitative and qualitative imbalances between the representation of able-bodied sport and disability sport mega-events are still in force (Goggin and Newell 2000;Howe 2008). The persistence of condescending narratives and stereotypes (Bruce 2014;Cherney et al. 2015) shapes representations of athletes with an impairment, which, to a certain extent, seem to remain biased and anchored in stigma (Kolotouchkina et al. 2021). 2.2. Best Reporting Practices on the Paralympics In contrast to the longstanding invisibility and stereotyping of athletes with disabilities, recent Paralympics have offered outstanding examples of news outlets providing respectful media coverage that represents Paralympians as athletes first (Page et al. 2022). Apart from Channel 4’s abovementioned broadcasting strategy in Great Britain, the heritage of the Rio Paralympics is still present in Globoesporte.com, one of the most accessed sport information sites in Brazil; this website has a section exclusively dedicated to news on Paralympic sports (Menezes dos Santos et al. 2022). Similarly, the Spanish sports daily Marca has substantially increased its coverage of Paralympic sports and athletes since London 2012 and now publishes stories and interviews on a daily basis thanks to the financial support of the Spanish Paralympic Committee (Solves et al. 2019). In the context of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK offered innovative coverage both during the pre-games period and during the actual event, featuring a news program conducted by three anchors with different kinds of impairment. This corporation also launched an animated series that introduced anonymous and famous Japanese para-athletes of 11 Paralympic sports categories with anime-style narratives to provide an entertaining experience and, at the same time, explanatory content about the specifics of each para-sports discipline (Kolotouchkina et al. 2021, p. 105). NHK offers an example of how a PSM corporation may effectively contribute to ensure diversity and promote cultural citizenship through the coverage of underrepresented sports and athletes with disabilities (Rojas-Torrijos and Ramon 2021). After reporting on the Tokyo Games for Czech Television, Macková(2021) notes that, as Paralympic sport becomes more professional, journalists are changing their style by Journal. Media 2023,4293 reporting on athletes as professionals and by focusing more on the event and less on the life stories of athletes with disabilities. However, journalists still find that “the stories of what happened to athletes, how they came to their disability, how they overcame it, can educate the public on disability-related issues” (Macková2021, p. 54). Taking all recent media coverage of Paralympics into account, Antunovic and Bundon (2022) propose a reconsideration of professional journalistic values in order to ensure the responsible coverage of this mega-event and any disability sport in the future. These authors recommend that sports journalists develop merit- and sport-focused coverage of the Paralympics as a top-level, international sporting event, to act ethically and challenge stereotypes and to include diverse perspectives, as well as contextualizing their reporting by intertwining sports with other larger social issues. 2.3. New Platforms and Social Media Channels: New Avenues for Improving the Visibility of Athletes with Disabilities? As seen above, while coverage and global audiences of the Paralympics are experiencing constant growth, several challenges still impede the representation of disability in sports. For sports media professionals, some of these challenges are directly related to the ways they use digital platforms and social media channels to improve the coverage of athletes with impairments as a means of enhancing their visibility and transforming citizens’ perceptions of them. Goggin and Hutchins (2017, p. 230) state that “the London Paralympics saw social, mobile and online media fully incorporated into the media enterprise” and, since then, the attention paid to these high-impact platforms has been heightened by sports media outlets in their coverage of the mega-event. In the context of networked digital media, there has been an expanding line-up of popular and accessible sports media, not only produced by the industry but also by users and athletes; this development has been accompanied by the proliferation of niche channels and sources of digital sports media (Hutchins and Rowe 2012). Nevertheless, although social networking sites clearly have the potential to increase the visibility of Paralympians and promote social inclusion, these platforms sometimes replicate the exclusionary and discriminatory attitudes that, more often than not, people with disabilities experience offline. As noted by Ellis and Kent (2017, p. 1), “social media has the potential to both enable and further disable people with disability”. This may become a ‘double-edged sword’ for sports media outlets. As a matter of fact, they do not always make the most of social media platforms’ potential to produce a more diverse and multi-faceted sports news agenda that ultimately contributes to enhancing social inclusion and cultural citizenship (Ramon and Rojas-Torrijos 2022;Rojas-Torrijos and Ramon 2021). In any case, digital platforms such as blogs, podcasts and social media channels represent new avenues for amplifying the scope of sports media coverage and for filling gaps that still exist in current mainstream sport journalism. According to Domeneghetti (2021, p. 176), those gaps “are symptomatic of the tendency among legacy sports media and their staff, to shy away from reporting on complex issues”; these issues demand and deserve a higher level of attention from sports journalists than they currently receive. 3. Method This research examines the agenda diversity on Twitter offered during the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games by 15 European PSM companies: RTBF (Belgium), ˇ CeskáTelevize (Czech Republic), Yle (Finland), France TV (France), ZDF (Germany), RTÉ(Ireland), RAI (Italy), LTV (Latvia), NOS (The Netherlands), NRK (Norway), TVP (Poland), RTVE (Spain), SVT (Sweden), RTS (Switzerland) and Channel 4 (United Kingdom). Three research questions guided the study: • RQ1. What is the volume and frequency of content on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics published by European PSM companies on Twitter? What engagement figures (retweets and favorites) are obtained by those publications? Journal. Media 2023,4294 • RQ2. What agenda is delivered by European PSM companies regarding the proportion of coverage devoted to different Paralympic sports? How much coverage is devoted to sportswomen? • RQ3. Which multimedia elements are deployed by European PSM companies on Twitter ? To identify a suitable sample, researchers filtered the list of the IPC’s official broadcast partners to select Europe-based companies. In the process, PSM companies that did not have a sports-centered account (such as RTP in Portugal or LTR in Lithuania) or whose Twitter accounts were not updated (such as @DRSporten in Denmark or @ERTsports in Greece) were discarded from the sample. To ensure comparability, in countries where two or more official Paralympic broadcasters exist (such as Germany and Switzerland), one account was selected. Finally, broadcasters from 15 countries, representing diverse regions and models of media systems (Hallin and Mancini 2004;Castro-Herrero et al. 2017), were selected. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022, the selected countries have high levels of internet penetration (surpassing 95% in the cases of Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK) and between 32% and 56% of the populations of these countries use social media as a source of news (Newman 2022). All of the examined broadcasters created their sports-centered Twitter accounts between 2007 and 2012, except for RTVE, which created its profile @deportes_rtve in 2014. So far, the most prolific accounts have been @BTBFsport,@francetvsport and @RTEsport, followed by @sport_tvppl and @RaiSport.@Sportstudio (the account of news and updates from the ZDF sports department) has the highest number of followers (618,649), followed by the Twitter accounts held by PSM in the Netherlands, France, Italy and the Czech Republic (Table 1). Table 1. Contextual data for the accounts examined. Country Account Joined Twitter Tweets Following Followers Belgium @RTBFsport 1 December 2009 169,437 1070 133,592 Czech Republic @sportCT 19 July 2011 67,334 454 212,969 Finland @YleSporten 10 February 2010 55,597 2039 4100 France @francetvsport 4 May 2010 147,761 1295 268,460 Germany @sportstudio (ZDF) 16 January 2009 60,204 1528 618,649 Ireland @RTEsport 19 September 2007 138,750 1363 125,858 Italy @RaiSport 30 November 2011 109,487 709 245,489 Latvia @ltvsports 4 November 2011 37,652 37 8231 The Netherlands @NOSsport 22 December 2010 89,782 79 346,060 Norway @NRK_Sport 19 August 2009 53,642 6077 82,031 Poland @sport_tvppl 22 January 2010 118,141 1405 124,339 Spain @deportes_rtve 22 May 2014 53,223 196 94,506 Sweden @SVTSport 20 January 2010 78,760 4001 164,390 Switzerland @ RTSsport 16 December 2012 65,372 223 25,220 United Kingdom @C4Sport 9 March 2010 4719 338 140,287 The tweets published by the sampled PSM companies during the timeframe of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics (24 August 2021–5 September 2021) were analyzed. Posts were gathered using Twitonomy (http://twitonomy.com, accessed on 6 September 2021), a webbased software program created by Digitonomy, which accesses data via Twitter’s application programming interface (API). This specialized tool has been extensively employed in scholarly research on sports communication over recent years (Grimmer and Horky 2018; Ramon and Rojas-Torrijos 2022;Rojas-Torrijos and Ramon 2021). To ensure the retrieval of all of the content published during the examined timeframe, data were extracted on 6 September 2021. The total number of downloaded tweets was N = 6072. Once the Twitter posts were downloaded, they were processed using Microsoft Excel and subsequently examined using the content analysis technique. Content analysis was defined by Berelson (1952, p. 18) as “a research technique for the objective, systematic and Journal. Media 2023,4295 quantitative description of the manifest content of communication”. Due to its flexibility and broad applicability, content analysis has been increasingly used to scrutinize content published by different actors on social media platforms (Clark et al. 2021). By employing “a uniform system of categories” (Franklin et al. 2005, p. 46), we applied this technique to tweets published by PSM companies on their sports Twitter handles, to contrast the research questions (RQ1–RQ3) with the empirical data obtained. The content analysis codebook included the following variables: date of publication; retweet count; favorite count; Paralympic-themed tweet or not; Paralympic sports covered; gender of protagonists; and the multimedia elements included in each tweet. These variables were informed by previous research focused on the nexus between PSM, sport and agenda diversity on social media (Ramon and Rojas-Torrijos 2022;Rojas-Torrijos and Ramon 2021), as well as by previous literature involving the news coverage of the Paralympic Games (Kolotouchkina et al. 2020;Solves et al. 2018;Solves et al. 2019). Content was coded in two stages. In the first stage, to answer RQ1, all the analysis units (N = 6072) were classified into tweets that were either focused on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games or not focused on them. In the second phase, the Paralympic-themed tweets (n = 2398) were coded to scrutinize both the agenda diversity and the range of multimedia elements offered by PSM accounts during the event. 4. Results 4.1. Volume, Frequency of Publication and Engagement (RQ1) The comparative analysis of 6072 tweets demonstrated the uneven attention devoted by European PSM companies to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. In the aggregate, 39.42% (n = 2398) of the messages focused on the event, although great imbalances can be observed among the different media organizations. Paralympics coverage represented 86.06% of the content posted by Channel 4, confirming the ongoing commitment of this right-holder to disability sports (Pullen et al. 2020a). Adopting an inclusive approach, content on the Paralympic Games exceeded 60% of the output published by PSM companies in France, Spain and Germany. Conversely, in other countries, such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland, this content only constituted between 20% and 30%. The proportion of tweets devoted to the Paralympics was smaller still in Switzerland (9.87%), Finland and the Czech Republic (9.55%) and Norway (8.33%) (Table 2). Table 2. Volume and frequency of the analyzed tweets. Country Account Tweets N Paralympics % Paralympics Paralympic Tweets/Day Belgium @RTBFsport 773 111 14.36% 8.54 Czech Republic @sportCT 356 34 9.55% 2.62 Finland @YleSporten 157 15 9.55% 1.15 France @francetvsport 580 402 69.31% 30.92 Germany @sportstudio (ZDF) 205 127 61.95% 9.77 Ireland @RTEsport 453 131 28.92% 10.08 Italy @RaiSport 304 80 26.32% 6.15 Latvia @ltvsports 129 26 20.16% 2.00 The Netherlands @NOSsport 355 100 28.17% 7.69 Norway @NRK_Sport 48 4 8.33% 0.31 Poland @sport_tvppl 474 95 20.04% 7.31 Spain @deportes_rtve 1400 938 67.00% 72.15 Sweden @SVTSport 237 57 24.05% 4.38 Switzerland @ RTSsport 314 31 9.87% 2.38 United Kingdom @C4Sport 287 247 86.06% 19.00 Journal. Media 2023,4296 Although athletes with disabilities were indeed featured in the agenda in many cases, their position was diluted due to the overabundance of content related to other highprofile sports and competitions. To illustrate this point, in Belgium, @RTBFsport devoted a significant part of their output to reporting on Formula One, the US Open, two major cycling events (La Vuelta and the Tour de Benelux) and the national men’s football team’s (the Belgian ‘Red Devils’) qualifying matches for the Qatar 2022 World Cup. A similar pattern can be observed in the case of @NOSsport in the Netherlands, where news updates about the domestic top-flight football league (Eredivisie) dominated the agenda, followed by detailed attention to Formula One and the major international tennis and cycling events that occurred during the relevant timeframe. With regards to the frequency of publication, it should be highlighted that @deportes_rtve published 72.15 tweets per day on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. The French broadcaster @francetvsport offered 30.92 Paralympic-themed tweets on average per day, followed by @C4Sport (19) and @RTEsport (10.08). These accounts greatly capitalized on the “nowness” of sports (Rowe 2018), offering a continuous stream of information consisting of minute-by-minute updates of events, live scores and Paralympic-themed news. During the timeframe of the study, the following accounts engaged unevenly with Twitter users. Notably, in the cases of @francetvsport,@RTEsport,@RaiSport,@ltvsports, @deportes_rtve and @C4Sport, Paralympic content achieved higher engagement figures (retweets and favorites) than non-Paralympic content (Table 3). This demonstrates that, in different countries, Paralympic information generated high interest among the public and even surpassed the figures obtained by tweets devoted to other sports and competitions. Table 3. Engagement figures obtained for Paralympic-content and non-Paralympic content. Country Account Paralympic Content Non-Paralympic Content N Retweets Favourites N Retweets Favourites Belgium @RTBFsport 111 67 419 662 490 2368 Czech Republic @sportCT 34 98 3257 332 2784 28,846 Finland @YleSporten 15 0 12 142 17 150 France @francetvsport 402 13,165 83,253 178 802 5395 Germany @sportstudio (ZDF) 127 227 2638 78 253 3799 Ireland @RTEsport 131 2493 24,965 322 1718 13,405 Italy @RaiSport 80 2253 22,517 224 1243 16,127 Latvia @ltvsports 26 105 844 103 72 355 The Netherlands @NOSsport 100 632 10,430 225 901 11,408 Norway @NRK_Sport 4 2 20 44 20 276 Poland @sport_tvppl 95 1189 9845 379 1917 30,290 Spain @deportes_rtve 938 13,129 54,314 462 2028 7383 Sweden @SVTSport 57 142 2645 180 280 6868 Switzerland @ RTSsport 31 28 251 329 110 1190 United Kingdom @C4Sport 247 10,370 59,830 40 379 5245 4.2. Diversity Agenda: Sports and Gender (RQ2) Our findings reveal that, in Tokyo 2020, European PSM companies gave prominence to highly commodified Paralympic sports while minimizing the exposure of other disciplines, thus reinforcing the diversity imbalances observed in legacy media (Pullen et al. 2020a). Leaving aside ‘multisport’ posts (19.30% of the sample), three Paralympic sports had a significant presence and accounted for half of the sample: swimming (n = 503; 20.98%), athletics (n = 449; 18.72%) and cycling (n = 257; 10.72%). Those three sports were followed by wheelchair basketball (n = 130; 5.42%) and table tennis (n = 125; 5.21%) (Table 4). Journal. Media 2023,4297 Table 4. Paralympics sports agenda. Sports N % Archery 22 0.92 Athletics 449 18.72 Badminton 24 1.00 Boccia 18 0.75 Cycling 257 10.72 Equestrian 40 1.67 Five-a-side football 46 1.92 Goalball 9 0.38 Judo 30 1.25 Paracanoe 26 1.08 Powerlifting 16 0.67 Rowing 15 0.63 Shooting 30 1.25 Sitting volleyball 9 0.38 Swimming 503 20.98 Table tennis 125 5.21 Taekwondo 7 0.29 Triathlon 67 2.79 Wheelchair basketball 130 5.42 Wheelchair fencing 10 0.42 Wheelchair rugby 30 1.25 Wheelchair tennis 70 2.92 Multisport 465 19.39 Total 2398 100.00 Many events and protagonists did not receive the wider visibility and recognition that social media platforms can easily afford. The emphasis on hyper-commodified Paralympic sports came at the expense of other minority disciplines. In fact, eight sports (archery, boccia, powerlifting, rowing, goalball, sitting volleyball, taekwondo and wheelchair fencing) were barely visible across the sample: they did not reach 1% of the coverage and received a total number of 106 tweets combined. The scope of accounts such as @francetvsport (20), @C4Sport (18) and @deportes_rtve (17) was remarkably diverse, as the three corporations covered a wide range of Paralympic disciplines (Table 5). Those accounts were followed by @sportstudio and @RaiSport—which covered 13 sports each—and @RTBFsport,@NOSsport and @SVTSport, which delivered news on 12 individual and team sports. PSM companies in Finland, Latvia, Norway and Switzerland demonstrated a lower level of diversity, showcasing five or fewer Paralympic sports in their timelines. In those countries, attention was concentrated on those sports that achieved more medals, such as athletics in the cases of Finland and Switzerland, or equestrianism in the case of Latvia. It should be noted that, in nine countries across the sample (the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Finland, Norway and Switzerland), the total number of Paralympic sports covered by PSM companies was lower than the number of Paralympic sports in which their home athletes competed. The diversity imbalance of these accounts in relation to Tokyo 2020 also had a gendered dimension. Table 6demonstrates that the Paralympic information disseminated by PSM companies on Twitter primarily focused on male athletes (n = 1057; 44.08% of the sample). Female participants were featured in 746 posts (31.11% of the sample), while nearly a quarter of the posted Twitter messages were devoted both to male and female competitors (n = 595; 24.81%). Notable exceptions to this trend can be found in the cases of @RTEsport (Ireland), @RTSsport (Switzerland) and @SVTSport (Sweden), where publications devoted to female athletes exceeded half of their output. In those countries, the successes of female competitors such as Ellen Keane (swimming), Katie-George Dunleavy, Anna Beck and