The All Whites are alright with us: An analysis of New Zealand national media coverage surrounding the 2010 All Whites World Cup finals campaign

Abstract

In June of 2010, the New Zealand men’s representative football team, the All Whites, contested the FIFA World Cup finals in South Africa for only the second time. Due to their credible on-field performances and unprecedented exposure in the national media, their campaign captured the attention of the New Zealand public like never before; surpassing even the national interest in the previous 1982 All Whites and their own storied World Cup finals campaign. Mainstream New Zealand’s sudden resurgence of interest and the accompanying rise in the All Whites’ media profile provided a rare opportunity to undertake a substantial survey of the media discourses surrounding the team in the hopes of better understanding the ways in which national audiences were likely to have (re)configured their understandings regarding the team and, in the broader sense, football’s place in the contemporary New Zealand socio-cultural landscape. Via an integration of poststructuralist textual analysis and content analysis, this thesis examined a sampling of national media coverage related to the All Whites’ 2010 World Cup campaign. Overarching themes relating to masculinity, nationalism and celebrity were identified, and I argue that audiences engaging with the media discourses surrounding these themes would likely have been encouraged to ascribe to the All Whites (a) an acceptably masculine status, (b) an authentic affiliation to New Zealand national identity, and (c) to ascribe to All Whites captain Ryan Nelsen a legitimated celebrity status. Furthermore, I suggest that these likely interpretations are indicative of an incremental but ongoing shift for football and the All Whites away from New Zealand’s socio-cultural periphery and towards its centre.