e-ISSN: 2637-0875 Journal of Language and Communication, 7(2), 751-770, September (2020) ©Universiti Putra Malaysia Press

THE GOOD AND BAD DICHOTOMY OF THE MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS IN FOOTBALL NEWS

Nadhratunnaim Abas1* and Surinderpal Kaur2 1Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang, 26400 Bandar Jengka, Malaysia 2 Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

ABSTRACT Studies on the discourse of representation often involve good or bad values to indicate polarisation. Nevertheless, in the context of sports, literature on sportsmen’s associations with both values reveal that those who tend to be praised despite their flaws are socially included and deemed as the heroes. Meanwhile, those who tend to be blamed despite their good traits, can be regarded as the villains who are socially excluded. Thus, the paper aims to examine how the heroes and villains in the corpus of football news of an English local daily newspaper are represented to further investigate whether or not they are associated with both values. Based on the constructionist approach in the theory of representation, the study centralises on the analysis of social actors that is founded on the dimensions of good and bad which define their social inclusion or exclusion as stated according to van Dijk’s polarisation strategies. Based on the concordance analysis, the findings indicate that the actors became the heroes if their actions bring desirable outcomes and turned into the villains as they caused undesirable circumstances for their team. Hence, this may contribute to a new dimension of polarisation in which both good and bad values can define the socially included and excluded actors.

Keywords: heroes, bad, football, good, media representation, villains.

ARTICLE INFO Article history Received: February 9, 2020 Accepted: September 25, 2020 Published: September 30. 2020 Volume 7 Issue 2

© Penerbit Universiti Putra Malaysia

Abas, N. & Kaur, S

INTRODUCTION Vast literature on the representations of ‘Us’ and ‘Others’ has often been invested in the positive self and negative Others’ evaluation (see for instance, Dhoest, 2020; Cheng, 2020; Masroor et al, 2019; Degaf et al, 2019). Although this may be fairly common in most of the contexts, it may not suit those in sport. Hoffman (1992) perceived sport as unpredictable that, at times, the game may end with celebrated victories or miserable failures. Hence, it can influence how sportsmen are represented according to the positive or negative outcomes of the game. They may be praised as they succeed and blamed whenever they lose. Nevertheless, for faithful fans, they may blame their preferred sportsmen but eventually maintain their affiliation with the latter. This seems to be the case in May’s (2009) report that young men tended to disregard the negative media representation of Black male basketball players and continued to idolise them. Maneiro and Marchi (2015) viewed this as resulting from the mythical representation of sports heroes who prevail even in the face of adversity. Therefore, this seems to flout the common correlations between the dimensions of good or bad and social inclusion or exclusion. As this happens, it also unveils the overgeneralised assumption that defines polarisation according to its associations with the default values. This symbolises “automatic fitting” of the perception to the world and contributes to the naturalisation of the definition as a common-sensical notion (Fairclough, 2001). Consequently, it tends to overlook other ways in which inclusion or exclusion can occur despite relying on their associations with these values. Regardless, the definitions of good and bad in sport may also depend on how one is depicted. Mueller and Sutherland (2010) perceived sporting contests as the “metaphors of good versus evil, heroes versus villains” (p. 21). Hence, Barnes (2010) viewed sport as the narrative that compares good guys against bad guys. It may adhere to certain storylines that identify and regard one side better or worse than the other. They describe the game as the battle between good and evil that promises each side with what seems to be its rightful ending – victories as the reward for being good and defeats as the punishment for being bad. By default, while heroes represent good guys, villains represent the evil ones. The creation of such storylines exposes the role of the discourse producers who are responsible for tailoring the notions of heroes and villains according to the ideology of the institutions that they are affiliated with. According to Boyle (2006), “the sports industry has always had its pantheon of heroes and villains who have often been to a large extent created by media coverage, and sports journalism in particular” (p. 111). Therefore, the common perception about the heroes, for instance, can be constructed by “(the) information that is filtered, often sanitized, by media sources” (Wann, et al, 2001, p. 70). Coakley (2007) agreed that “media content is edited and ‘re-presented’” or “constructed” by those who “make decisions about content” based on “what attracts readers, listeners, and viewers” to “boost media profits” (pp. 404 – 405). This notion of ‘construction’ refers to “the media’s role in forming ‘frames for understanding’” (Macdonald, 2003, p. 14). Referred to as the most popular sports globally, football has been one of the most dominant sports in Malaysia (Sawe, 2018; “Fan Favorite: The Global”, 2018). The media has strived to bring the latest updates on football both locally and internationally. One of such media agencies in which football news has largely occupied its sports section is The Star, an English daily newspaper. In 2019, the survey by a market research company reported that The Star was the most read English newspaper (Chu, 2019, Sept 13). Besides reporting, the authors also tended to sensationalise the news by comparing the ‘good guys’ (as the heroes) against the ‘bad guys’ (as the villains) among the competing teams. Mueller and Sutherland (2010)

752 Journal of Language and Communication, 7(2), 751-770, September (2020) The Good and Bad Dichotomy of the Media Representation of Heroes and Villains in Football News mentioned that sports rivalries encourage fan involvement that can further boost the sales of products associated with their favourite players or teams. LaFauci (2015) pointed out that the tribal mentality of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is specifically tailored to fit into certain narratives that are profit-based. It heightens sports enthusiasts’ excitement over the good guys’ victory or the bad guys’ loss as it is unscripted unlike those in the movies (Dalakas, 2016). In this regard, the paper aims to investigate how heroes and villains are represented in football news and whether or not the dimensions of good and bad are associated with their representation.

SPORT HEROES AND VILLAINS Shuart (2007) defined “hero” as “a distinguished person, admired for their ability, bravery or noble qualities and worthy of emulation” (p. 128). According to Gammon (2014), in order to be admired, a hero must have proven himself whether or not by winning impressively or losing with honour. Delaney and Madigan (2009) categorised sport heroes into “the winner”, “skilled performers”, “social acceptability”, “group servant”, “risk takers”, “reluctant heroes”, “charismatic heroes” and “anti-heroes” (pp. 76 – 77). The winner is most often admired as the “extraordinarily skilled” who is capable of intimidating their opponents by their “presence” on the field and implying their “invincibility” (Delaney & Madigan, 2009, p. 76). In addition, Wann, et al (2001) believed that a hero has to meet certain “standards” perceived as “ideal” by the society such as “moral excellence” (pp. 70 – 71). The on- and off- the field excellence attributed to the “hero” label has been widely discussed in the studies of sport heroes (for instance, Dixon & Flynn, 2008; Parry, 2009; Gammon, 2014; Summers & Morgan, 2018; Bifulco & Tirino, 2018). The villains, on the other hand, possess traits contradicting to the heroes. Wann, et al. (2001) added that the villain label stems from their “social excesses, criminal conduct, or behaviours that violate traditional norms” which can lead to his or her public derogation (pp. 86 – 87). They are often described as “scandalous” and displaying behaviours that damage their reputation (Wann, et al. 2001, p. 86). Besides, they can also happen to be the rivals of the more popular sides (Delaney and Madigan, 2009). Through media representation, the audiences are introduced to the heroes and villains among sports casts. Louganis and Johnson, two athletes diagnosed with AIDS, were framed as heroes differently. While Louganis was seen as a “hero to gay men”, Johnson is “labelled as a courageous hero to everyone” (Wann, et al., 2001, p. 339). This demonstrates how the decision makers can “select” and “decide” on the content of the news such as in terms of who should be perceived as the “good guys”, “bad guys”, and “redemption” or “comeback stories” in order to “reproduce ideologies” that match the audiences’ preferences (Coakley, 2007, pp. 405 – 406). Bar-On (2014) related this to Mariona who was celebrated as “a ‘giant’ and one of the greatest players in the history of El Salvadoran soccer” (p. 75) and “David James, goalkeeper of the England national team in 2004” who was demonised as “a donkey” due to his mistake that “cost England victory in its match with Austria” (p. 112).

‘US’ AND ‘OTHERS’ POLARISATION The tribal mentality of ‘Us’ and ‘Others’ driven by sports rivalry can be influenced by the opinions that are constructed by an ideological pattern of polarisation. van Dijk (1998) referred to the ideological square that assigns particular value of good or bad to indicate ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ which are based on four strategies:  “emphasize our good properties or actions,  emphasize their bad properties or actions,

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 mitigate our bad properties or actions,  mitigate their good properties or actions” (van Dijk, 1998, p. 33)

These strategies can be textually realised by “lexical items” and propositions” that can demonstrate “value judgement” either pointing to good or bad such as “terrorist” or “racist” (van Dijk, 1998, p. 31 – 32). He further explained that these concepts, when formed into propositions, express meanings which can “imply opinions” that are ideological.

METHODOLOGY The study was founded on the constructionist approach in the theory of representation that focuses on the analysis of social actors. According to Hall (1997), “it is social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others” (p. 25). In the present context, these social actors refer to the football players who were mentioned in the news as those who were praised or blamed. In this way, the analysis could focus on their associations with the notions of good and bad properties or actions that describe the ‘us’ and ‘them’ as proposed in van Dijk’s (1998) polarisation strategies. The data for the study involved a corpus of news articles published in Football Everyday column of The Star. The corpus covered those from August 2011 to October 2012 and contained 1,306 articles with 483,179 words. The study was a part of a larger research project that aimed at investigating how the social actors in football were represented in football news and the data collection took place during this period. Furthermore, in these years, the Malaysian football witnessed the rise of the local Kelantan team (the Red Warriors) as a global phenomenon due to their treble victories in the local and international stages. As a result, the media coverage on the local teams especially Kelantan seemed to increase. In order to retrieve instances that depict their representation, the concordance analyses of the key nodes, “hero” and “villain” were performed on the corpus using Antconc 3.5. Through these analysis, it could identify those described as the heroes and or the villains in the corpus and also reveal their co-occurrences with the words or phrases that denote the notions of good and bad. Hence, this helps to investigate whether or not the dimensions of good and bad are associated with their representation. In addition, the analysis of the concordance plots that could locate their occurrences in the corpus might indicate the kinds of stories (positive and (or) negative) that they mostly appeared in. This helps to uncover the pattern of news concentration pertaining to whether or not the heroes and villains appeared in mostly positive or negative stories. Consequently, it could further indicate whether or not they were represented positively and (or) negatively.

ANALYSIS The concordance analysis identified seven names who were represented as the “hero” and (or) “villain”. While six of them have been assigned with the “hero” or “villain” title, one was found to be referred to as both the “hero” and “villain”. They were all football players of the local teams. Table 1 presents the instances of “hero” and “villain” in the corpus according to their good and (or) bad values. The analysis finds at least three categories of “hero” and “villain” from these instances. The first category deals with the notion of a hero that contributes

754 Journal of Language and Communication, 7(2), 751-770, September (2020) The Good and Bad Dichotomy of the Media Representation of Heroes and Villains in Football News to the desirable circumstances for his team such as scoring winning goals or simply leading the team to victories. Hairuddin appeared most frequently as the hero in this category, totalling of up to seven instances in the analysis, although they were not news reports of the match that led his team, Negri Sembilan to earn the Malaysia Cup winners title after defeating their opponents, Terengganu. It seems that his deed of scoring a winning goal for his team made him referred to as the “Malaysia Cup hero” even when he no longer played for Negri Sembilan as in example 1(iv). Similarly, the other two players deemed as the hero in this first category, Ahmad Nordin and Ghaddar, as Terengganu and Kelantan player respectively, were mentioned due to their winning goals in all the instances. The second category concerns the hero that was praised and blamed and further classified into two subcategories referred to as, firstly, the hero-zero and secondly, the hero- villain. Wleh serves the hero-zero title as he was firstly, praised for being a “prolific striker” for Sime Darby and scoring winning goals in a semi-final match. However, he was also blamed for his inability to lead his team to another victory over his opponents. Although he was not referred to as the villain in these examples, being a “zero” caused him to be portrayed negatively. Like Wleh, Owona was firstly praised for scoring winning goals and successfully defending his team from the opponents’ penalty kick. However, he was then, blamed not only for his inability to overcome the opponents, but also for failing the penalty kick for his team that eventually benefitted the latter. In this case, Owona earned the titles of both the hero and villain. The third category refers to the villain who is the opposite of the hero for causing undesirable circumstances for his team. Two players were deemed as the villain, Fitri who played for Selangor and Daudsu who played for Kelantan. While Fitri created an opportunity for the opponent team to score a goal, Daudsu’s own goal made him the scapegoat of his team’s failure. Both Fitri and Daudsu were blamed for allowing their opponents to defeat their team.

Table 1. “Hero”, “villain” and their good and bad in football news

No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

1. Hairuddin -Malaysia Cup final i. Among the players who left hero the Deer are twins Mohd Aidil Zafuan and Mohd -Malaysia cup hero Zaquan Adha Abdul Razak, goalkeeper Mohd -Hero of the night Farisal Harun, defender -scored the winner Mohd Irwan Fadli Idrus against Terengganu in and Malaysia Cup final the final hero Hairuddin Omar. (Underdogs Negri ready to -opportunistic goal take on the Kelantan warriors in the Charity -sharpshooter Shield. January 7, 2012. The Star). -scored a spectacular scissor-kick goal ii. But former Negri Malaysia Cup hero Hairuddin Omar,

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

who scored the winner against Terengganu in the final last year, restored the Premier League champions’ two-goal cushion with an opportunistic goal in the 80th minute. (Forces stun champs Negri with a second-half tour de force. September 29, 2012. The Star).

iii. There are also a handful of former internationals led by Rezal Zambery Yahaya and Negri Sembilan’s Malaysia Cup hero Hairuddin Omar. (Armed Forces set to ignite the league, January 7, 2012. The Star).

iv. Their sharpshooter is last year’s Negri Sembilan Malaysia Cup hero Hairuddin Omar. (Expensively assembled Forces out to prove worth against Perak. February 17, 2012. The Star).

v. Seasoned campaigner Mohd Shukor Adan has warned that Negri will be no pushovers for the new season although they have parted ways with several key players, including last year’s Malaysia Cup hero Hairuddin Omar, goalkeeper Mohd Farizal Harun, defender Irwan Fadli Idrus and twins Mohd Zaquan and Mohd Aidil Adha Abdul Razak. (Samuel, E. January 6,

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

2012. Deer can still pose a threat without star players, says Shukor. The Star).

vi. “I have been with many teams but Forces are the best – in terms of management and running of the team,” added the 2011 Malaysia Cup final hero (Hairuddin Omar) when he scored a spectacular scissor-kick goal in Negri’s 2-1 win over Terengganu. (Samuel, E. & Rajan, K. October 20, 2012. Malaysia Cup final: Intriguing game in store. The Star).

vii. Negri coach Mohd Azraai Khor Abdullah will be proud of his senior citizens especially skipper Mohd Shukor, centre-back Norhafiz Zamani Misbah and the hero of the night Hairuddin – all in their prime of their playing careers. (Hairuddin scores winner to land a third straight Malaysia Cup medal. October 30, 2011. The Star).

2. Ahmad -Turtles’ hero i. Ahmad Nordin, who was Nordin hailed as a hero after -Hero for terengganu coming on as a substitute and scoring the winning -a substitute and goal in the FA Cup final scoring the winning against Kelantan in June, goal hopes to repeat the feat -a big-game player against a Negri team who are in their third straight Super-sub Malaysia Cup final. (Birthday boy Ahmad has

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

two wishes: To score and lift Cup, October 28, 2011. The Star).

ii. Ahmad Nordin, who was hailed as the Turtles’ hero after scoring the winner in their 2-1 win over the Red Warriors in June’s FA Cup final, is expected to replace Ismail Faruqi, who will have to sit out Friday’s match after being red- carded in the first leg. “Ahmad Nordin is a Terengganu hero and a big- game player. We stand a better chance of progressing to the semi- finals if he performs on Friday,” he said. (Farik Zolkepli. October 13, 2011. Turtles’ super sub Ahmad Nordin to stand in for Ismail. The Star).

iii. Super-sub Ahmad Nordin was the hero for Terengganu when he scored the winning goal against Kelantan in the FA Cup final in June. (Farik Zolkepli. October 27, 2011. Ismail willing to sacrifice for good of the team. The Star).

3. Ghaddar -Seven-goal hero i. They will be without three key players – top striker -Hero for the Red and seven-goal hero Mohd Warriors Ghaddar Mahmoud (thigh injury) of Lebanon and -making good a regular centrebacks S. penalty kick Subramaniam (hamstring strain) and Obinne Nwaneri (suspension) of Nigeria –

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

-netting the solitary when they travel for the goal away-leg. (Samuel, E. September 13, 2012. -strikes in the 24th, Sounds so fam-iliar). 48th and 88th minutes ii. Mohammed Ghaddar Mahmoud was the hero for the Red Warriors, making good a penalty kick in the 58th minute. (Kelantan bag FA Cup. May 19, 2012. The Star).

iii. Lebanese hitman Mohd Ghaddar Mahmoud was the hero, netting the solitary goal in the 25th minute. (Warriors on top. June 30, 2012. The Star).

iv. The Lebanese striker turned hero for the Red Warriors with strikes in the 24th, 48th and 88th minutes. (Ghaddar grabs hat-trick as Warriors slay Arema. April 5, 2012. The Star).

4. Wleh -Hero in the Premier -Hero to zero i. Sime Darby FC’s prolific League club’s fairy striker Patrick tale run -fails to beat ‘Ronaldinho’ Wleh has Perak been the hero in the -prolific striker goalkeeper Premier League club’s fairy tale run to the FA Cup semi-finals. (Samuel, E. April 19, 2012. Free- scoring Liberian Wleh powering Sime Darby to greater heights. The Star).

ii. From hero to zero: Sime Darby FC’s Patrick Wleh (centre) fails to beat Perak goalkeeper M. Nasir Basharudin during their Malaysia Cup match on

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

Wednesday. (Samuel, E. August 27, 2012. Sime Darby FC show misfiring Liberian striker the door. The Star).

iii. But Wleh has gone from hero to zero in double quick time. (Samuel, E. August 27, 2012. Sime Darby FC show misfiring Liberian striker the door. The Star).

5. Owona -Instant hero -Hero and i. Owona started off well and villain became an instant hero -starred with a brace when he starred with a -rescued brace in their 2-1 win over -scoring both the Negri from Kelantan in the season goals defeat opener Charity Shield match in January. (Samuel, -talismanic striker -squandered E. April 12, 2012. Owona a spot-kick likened to City’s Balotelli for on and off-field antics. The Star).

ii. Owona was the hero scoring both the goals. (Samuel, E. April 6, 2012. Negri plan to replace their two unreliable imports. The Star).

iii. The Deer’s talismanic striker Jean-Emmanuelle Owona was both hero and villain for his side. Owona rescued Negri from defeat with a 22nd minute equaliser after Liberian striker Francis Doe converted a penalty on the 4th to put the Turtles in front. Cameroonian Owona, however, squandered a spot kick in

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

the 86th minute. (Rajan, K. April 18, 2012. Kelantan keep up pressure on Lions. The Star).

iv. Negri’s talismanic striker Jean-Emmanuel Owona was both the hero and villain for the Deer. Owona rescued Negri from defeat with a 22nd minute equaliser after Liberian striker Francis Doe converted a penalty in the fourth minute to put the Turtles in front.

Cameroonian Owona, however, squandered a spot-kick in the 86th minute. (Farik Zolkepli. April 19, 2012. Mat Zan urges Terengganu to challenge for league title. The Star).

6. Fitri Villain by i. However, the tide turned losing Kelantan’s way when pint- possession sized Selangor winger Mohd Fitri Shazwan Raduwan turned villain by losing possession in his own half to allow Mohd Nor Farhan Mohd to grab the winner in the 62nd minute. (Nor Farhan goal gives Kelantan the edge. October 7, 2012. The Star).

7. Daudsu Villain by i. The 27-year-old ex- scoring own national player (Mohd goal in the Daudsu Jamaluddin) broke dying the hearts of thousands of minutes Red Warrior fans when he turned villain by scoring a bizarre own goal in the

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No. Hero / Good Bad Example villain

dying minutes of the FA Cup final against Terengganu 11 months ago. (Samuel, E. May 18, 2012. Daudsu out to make amends for FA Cup own- goal nightmare. The Star).

Next, the analysis of concordance plots further locates these heroes’ and villains’ occurrences in positive and (or) negative news stories. This helps to indicate the pattern that shows the kind of stories that they were mostly in. Ghaddar records the most frequent occurrences which is 167, Hairuddin, 133 times and Ahmad Nordin, 20 times. Since Ghaddar and Hairuddin were mentioned more frequently than Nordin, the analysis focuses on the two players’ pattern of occurrences in order to identify their similarities and differences. As shown in Figure 1 below, both players record the same highest concentration in an article which is 11 occurrences. However, while the article on Ghaddar reported a negative story about his absence from training and disciplinary hearing, the one on Hairuddin reported a positive story about his title- winning achievement. Moreover, the article on Ghaddar was shorter compared to the one on Hairuddin which suggests the wider coverage of a positive story on the latter. The difference in their citizenship may also play a role in how they were framed in the news as Ghaddar is a foreigner whereas Hairuddin is a Malaysian.

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Figure 1. Comparison of the concordance plots between the first category heroes (“Ghaddar” and “Hairuddin”)

Next, as illustrated in Figure 2, the kind of story that the two heroes in the second category mostly appeared tends to differ. The hero-zero Wleh’s nine occurrences are on a positive story about his winning goals that brought a victory to his team, Sime Darby. In contrast, the hero-

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villain Owona appeared most frequently (10 times) on a negative story that referred to him as the “bad boy” due to his misbehaviours on and off the field. Although both terms tend to denote a negative version of the originally positive “hero”, the hero-zero appears to be more positive than the hero-villain depiction.

Figure 2. Comparison of the concordance plots between the second category heroes (“Wleh” and “Owona”)

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Finally, the analysis of concordance plots of the two villains, Fitri and Daudsu, as shown in Figure 3 indicates their occurrences in negative stories. Although Fitri has been mentioned once in all the eight articles he appeared in, he has been in five negative stories about his inability to score for his team, Selangor and creating an opportunity for Kelantan to score as he lost the ball to the opponents (refer to example 6(i)). In this case, he was blamed for his failure to contribute to his team. Additionally, Fitri has been mentioned positively once as a goal scorer:

The Red Giants got their goals through S. Veenod (30th) and flanker Mohd Fitri Shazwan Raduwan (84th)…, Samuel, E. (Oct 3, 2012). Soldiers march into semis at Negri’s expense, The Star).

Besides, he was also mentioned neutrally twice as a Selangor player. The lack of news concentration on Fitri in an article, unlike the other players may demonstrate his lack of popularity in the media. In comparison, Daudsu’s eight occurrences are in a negative story that reported his own goal leading towards his team’s defeat. This seems to be consistent with his depiction as the despised villain who disappointed his team as he netted the ball inside his opponents’ goal entrance.

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Figure 3. Comparison of the concordance plots between the villains (“Fitri” and “Daudsu”)

DISCUSSION The study has demonstrated how the hero and villain labels are associated with their good and (or) bad values that lead to desirable and (or) undesirable circumstances. The hero label of the first category has consistently been associated with praise that highlights their good values. The three players who were considered as the heroes have displayed their athletic excellence

766 Journal of Language and Communication, 7(2), 751-770, September (2020) The Good and Bad Dichotomy of the Media Representation of Heroes and Villains in Football News in completing what seems to be an impossible mission for their team. While Hairuddin enabled Negri Sembilan to become Malaysia Cup winners, Ahmad Nordin, a substitute player who was not even listed on the forefront of his team was able to defeat Kelantan, known for being unmatched rivals and title-winners, through his winning goal. Ghaddar’s reputation as the “seven-goal” and hat-trick hero has also demonstrated his on the pitch prowess. Those in this category are whom Delaney and Madigan (2009) referred to as the “winner”-type hero whose skills are admired. The second category hero who was both praised and blamed was associated with both the positives and negatives that led to their team’s desirable and undesirable circumstances. The hero-zero and hero-villain labels demonstrate the instance of an actor with positive and negative representations. In this context, when the player scored for his team, he was hailed as the hero but when he failed to do so, he was blamed as the villain. This shows that a hero can also be the villain when he is unable to bring desirable outcomes to his team or led them to disastrous consequences such as defeats, own goals or even opponents’ penalty kick slip. Additionally, it also represents the hero in this category as the admired but flawed persona. Maneiro and Marchi (2015) reported similar cases as they identified some Uruguayan football players whose virtues and flaws were pointed out in the media, making them represented as both the heroes and villains. In another example, Shuart (2007) pointed out that an athlete such as Babe Ruth who was criticised as a womaniser and an alcoholic was then, considered as a hero. On the same note, Barnes (2010) perceived a hero as someone who is able to find glory in his or her failure. The villain label in the third category has been consistently associated with undesirable circumstances. Like the heroes in the first category, the villains fit the standard characteristics of the derogated antagonists whose flaws or bad values are highlighted. Their mistakes on the field that bring mishap to their team cause them to be blamed. While the heroes of the first category and the villains may appear to be parallel to the van Dijk’s (1998) dimension of good or bad in the ideological square as polarisation strategies, the analysis also unveils another category of hero that represents the ‘grey area’ of the good and bad. Hence, the study intends to point out how the socially included and excluded can be represented both positively and negatively. The positive connotation that the term “hero” brings as someone who is flawed but admired (see Shuart, 2007; Gammon, 2014) may indicate his social acceptance. This can be in the case of Wleh who was referred to as the hero-zero type. Moreover, the negative connotation that the term “villain” denotes despite his good action may indicate his social rejection. For instance, Fitri in example 6(i) was blamed and considered as a villain for allowing his opponents to score a goal although he was praised for his goal- scoring in another article. A similar case can be seen in Sanderson’s (2013) study of the representation of a college football coach on the social sites, Brian Kelly, who was initially praised and depicted as a hero for bringing victories to the college team. However, he was instantly blamed and represented as a villain when he accepted an offer to move to another college. Unfortunately, in this context, van Dijk’s (1998) polarisation strategies that highlight Our good and Their bad (actions and properties) and mitigate Our bad and Their good (actions and properties) may seem to be unidimensional (depending on a single dimension of good or bad to trace polarisation) and insufficient to cater to the polarised profiling of the heroes and villains in this context. The study is concerned that, while the two may fit into van Dijk’s (1998) polarisation strategies in their representation, the heroes in the second category may require more than the assigning of a single value to unveil how they are polarised. The complex

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nature of the moral evaluations of characters represented by the protagonists (or the heroes) and antagonists (or the villains) has led Sanders and Tsay-Vogel (2016) to believe that they involved beyond the good and bad in which the grey area in between must also be considered. In their study of the viewers’ evaluations of Harry Potter’s movie characters, they found that the heroes, in particular, were morally disengaged despite the extreme violence against the villains. This shows that as long as the flaws or sins are justified, (as in the case of the heroes committing crimes in order to save the world), they may be excused and accepted as necessary and inevitable. Thus, this grey area may be applicable to the context of hero-villain representation.

CONCLUSION The study has contributed to the study of representation in the context of sport as it examines how sportsmen who are football players are polarised and categorised into three categories concerning the heroes and villains. They can range from the heroes on one end with mostly positive news to the villains on the other end with mostly negative news and another category of hero-zero-hero-villain in between of positive and negative news. This means that while good values are commonly linked to social inclusion and bad values often indicate social exclusion, the study tends to show otherwise. It unveils the grey area that occupies the middle range of the good to bad spectrum in the profiling of the socially included or excluded characters. Hence, the study calls for considerations for this grey area category as another strategy to demonstrate cases of polarisation. Nevertheless, while the study may be applicable to the context of sport, it may not necessarily be generalised to include other settings. Future studies on the representation of heroes and villains can perhaps take this grey area category into account in their analysis of social actors’ inclusion and exclusion.

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