Long before the data work, the same instinct: take a cultural text apart and show how it was built. My master's thesis is a qualitative study of how media and advertising manufactured hockey player Sidney Crosby into a symbol of Canadian national identity — and a product.
How are sporting celebrities — and the discourses of corporate nationalism attached to them — produced through contemporary advertising, and who does the producing?
A qualitative analysis of both the media representations and the production of advertising featuring Sidney Crosby, centred on Gatorade's televised campaigns — reading masculinity, nationalism, and the role of cultural intermediaries in the texts and in how they were made.
Celebrity and national identity aren't simply reflected in advertising; they're actively manufactured — with cultural intermediaries shaping which values and perceptions get sold alongside the product.
Within Canadian culture, where the sport of hockey is largely considered a mythologized component of identity, hockey players — such as the National Hockey League's Sidney Crosby — are not only frequently represented in the daily media, but are also utilized in promotional and advertising campaigns.
Ultimately, this study examines how sporting celebrities and discourses of corporate nationalism are produced within contemporary advertising campaigns, and the role that cultural intermediaries play in the promotion of particular values and perceptions.
Full thesis available on request.