Sports celebrity as an intermediary and cultural instrument of fundamental rights and ethnic-racial equality. A study of the corporate campaign "common thread", published by the sports brand Nike on instagram

Abstract

Corporate brands play a social role through the discourses they broadcast on their social media. The sports celebrity acts as a cultural intermediary and communicating instrument in the value system that the brand brings together in defence of social, cultural and ethnic diversity (Turner, 2004; Erdogan, 1999; Marshall, 1997). From this perspective, the aim of this proposal is to detect the socio-cultural elements that articulate the discourse constructed by the Nike sports brand in defence of racial and ethnic equality in sport. Methodologically, the content analysis approach is adopted (Krippendorff, 2013). The data consists of 3 short films that make up a campaign created by the sports brand Nike called "Common Thread". The criterion for their selection was the discursive projection that the brand emits in favour of socio-cultural equality on Instagram. In order to define the model of analysis, the classical studies of Greimas (1976) and McCracken (1989) is taken as a starting point. The results show that the brand manifests itself on social media as a social agent that promotes equality and racial-ethnic rights for the black sports community through sport and culture.