A cobertura jornalística nos esports (esportes eletrônicos)

Abstract

In recent years a phenomenon has attracted the attention of the public. However, beyond these audiences, investors and sponsors have also turned to this event: eSports, electronic sports played through online games that include elements characteristic of traditional sports such as professional players, coaches, reserve players, training centers and routines, sponsors and sup-porters, media coverage, live broadcasts with audiences and fans. Since 2014, the audience ra-tings have been reaching high rates, so companies belonging to the global media conglomerates started to invest in the production of media and journalistic content on the subject. In this con-text, we ask ourselves: How does digital journalism approach eSports?, whereas journalism is an activity that accompanies society and addresses the relevant topics of being informed, as well as the genesis of electronic sports that depart from digital games, and are viewed by the most conservative as “just a game”, but one that moves numbers huge financial markets around the world. In order to find the answers to this question, we are guided by three hypotheses: 1)Di-gital journalism approaches the journalistic writing about eSports in a reliable way to journa-listic practices; 2) Digital journalism approaches the verification of information about eSports in a reliable way to journalistic practices; 3) Digital journalism approaches the eSports journa-listic agenda in a way that is reliable to journalistic practices. In order to prove such hypothe-sis, bservor the need to analyze eS ports - related productions has news value in sports journa-listic coverage on the SporTV channel's website in order to identify whether the basic journa-listic practices of a newsroom can be found in their narratives. Accordingly, this paper is divi-ded into four chapters that aim to answer such questions. It starts from the contextualization of the Information Age according to Castells (1999) where Lévy (1999) and Jenkins (2009) con-tribute to the reflections on cyberspace, cyberculture and a society of convergence, so that they explain the emergence of society that enables a virtual practice like eSports. In a second mo-ment, we present the genesis of eSports, from Wagner (2006), Jensen (2017) and Pereira (2014) that explain how this practice developed, culminating in its professionalization and its commer-cialization. Finally, we present the methodology used in this research, which starts from a rese-arch technique based on the documentary analysis proposed by Gil (2008) and a technique of an analysis technique based on the content analysis proposed by Bardin (1977), which we ap-plied to nine reports from the SporTV site, our research object, since it represents a media con-glomerate of great recognition in the sports journalism consuming public. At the end of our analysis, we could conclude that the vehicle is engaged in production, even though its reliability to journalistic practices is partial.