South African journalists' experiences of reporting on the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™

Abstract

During mega-sport events, such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) World Cup and the Olympic Games, the focus is often on football players and athletes respectively. Other important role-players, such as volunteers, journalists and spectators who make mega-sport events a success, are not in the lime light. The goal of this study was to describe South African journalists’ experiences of reporting at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with the purpose of learning from their experiences in view of the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The study was conducted from a phenomenological position with five South African journalists. The data for this research was produced by means of written essays and interviews and analysed according to the Duquesne Phenomenological Research Method (DPRM). The results indicated that the journalists’ experienced the 2010 FIFA World Cup as an enormous event that challenged them to move into unfamiliar territory during their preparation for and participation in this event, which lead to the readers of their newspapers moving into unfamiliar territory. Reflecting back on the event the journalists’ experienced growth in their confidence as journalists and were proud of being South African.