Constructing a New Framework for Sport and Development: Investigating the Media Portrayal of Village Basketball Association in China

Sport and development have a long and intricate relationship. Since 2022, a grassroots basketball league named “Village Basketball Association” has gained widespread attention across China and the world, and made significant contributions to local development. In this study, we examined how the VBA was narrated by the Chinese media and how its connection with local and national agendas of development was discursively constructed. By combining content analysis and critical discourse analysis, we found that the Chinese media showcased a strong discursive inclination towards development topics when reporting the VBA. This further includes the construction of the VBA as a special stage, with emphasis on its grassroots nature, politicizing the VBA with efforts and agenda of development, and de-contextualizing it from the sporting realm to construct it as a model for rural development. Based on our findings, we propose a “balanced and coordinated framework” of sport for development studies to address the current theoretical niches.