LAWRENCE — Sports are often viewed as an escape from the problems of the real world. But when a Colombian soccer star's father was kidnapped, the resulting media coverage helped move the story from the field of play to front-page news that united a country, cast doubt on peace negotiations and influenced how people viewed a president on multiple continents.
A new study from the University of Kansas found that the 2023 kidnapping of Luis Manuel Díaz, father of Colombian soccer star Luis "Lucho" Díaz, resulted in coverage in Colombian media of the younger Díaz as a national hero whose suffering became emblematic of the nation's larger struggles. In the United Kingdom, it was portrayed as a reputational crisis with international ramifications.
The findings show the power of media in shaping discourse during crises and the connection among sports, politics and violence in contemporary Colombia, the authors said.
Steve Bien-Aimé, a fan of Liverpool FC, Díaz's professional club, was aware of the kidnapping through coverage of his favorite team. Margarita Orozco, a native of Colombia and fellow media scholar, has firsthand experience with soccer, politics, media and culture in her home nation.
"It was on my mind because I'd followed the story. About two months later, a call went out for studies on sports and politics in society," Bien-Aimé said. "I thought it would make a good study for how it was presented in both Colombia and England. Margarita's depth of knowledge on the armed conflict in Colombia brought a lot of nuance that we don't often see in comparative media studies."
Orozco and Bien-Aimé, assistant professors of journalism & mass communications at KU, conducted a comparative media analysis of coverage of the 2023 kidnapping in El Espectador, a Colombian news outlet, and The Guardian, an English news source. They analyzed 105 El Espectador articles on the topic and 51 from The Guardian to better understand how the story was framed. The study was published in the journal Sport in Society.
Following the kidnapping, a rebel guerrilla group known as ELN was identified by the Colombian government as responsible. The group also initially kidnapped Díaz's mother but released her within hours, while they held Luis Manuel Díaz for 13 days. The group later acknowledged responsibility, saying he was taken by mistake and that they had not realized he was the father of a well-known national athlete. Media framing of the story revealed outrage that the relative of a famous athlete was subject to such violence. It also cast doubt on the nation's ongoing attempts to negotiate peace between the government and rebel groups during a bilateral ceasefire.
"What we found was that Díaz was consistently framed as a national hero who embodies Colombian strength and resistance. He was not portrayed as someone with economic privilege, but as a player who began very young, coming from Afro-Colombian and indigenous roots and worked his way up to the national team and major professional clubs," Orozco said. "Soccer is one of the few things in Colombia that brings people together across differences, and the coverage showed how the kidnapping of a star athlete's family carried broader implications for the Total Peace initiative and for the Petro presidency."
Colombian President Gustavo Petro was leading an effort he dubbed Total Peace to try to bring an end to the country's decades-long armed conflict through negotiations and reconciliation with multiple armed groups. Media coverage of the story showed intense doubt on the validity of such efforts. The president faced criticism about his leadership and ability to negotiate peace, as did the ELN, since the kidnapping took place during a ceasefire, sowing doubts about their trustworthiness, the authors wrote.
The Guardian, the British paper that covers Díaz's Liverpool FC team, largely framed the story as a reputational crisis and one that had international ramifications, especially in sport. While some coverage was devoted to what the crisis meant for Petro and Colombian peace, the story was more widely framed as adversity for Díaz to persevere through and a challenge to his club's success.
"Sports opened the door in a way to discuss bigger issues. In Colombia, it was a national politics and culture story," Bien-Aimé said. "In The Guardian, it was primarily a sports story, not in a malicious way, but there was a significant difference. The framing is limited to what the audience knows as well. At times, they tried to get into the nuance of the president and culture in Colombia, but this is very difficult. There was largely the trope of succeeding through adversity, but it was not necessarily done as an act of indifference."
In total, there were four main thematic categories identified in the coverage: Portrayals of Luis Díaz as a national icon, media representations of peace and political trust, emotional appeals and public reaction, and framing of guerrilla movements' legitimacy.
The emotional appeals were reflected in coverage sharing shock and outrage from people from all sectors of Colombian society, the authors wrote.
Orozco said such kidnappings were long considered only a problem for landowners and business people in rural areas who would have the means to pay ransom, but coverage showed people realizing it was still a problem and could affect everyone, as reflected in coverage with appeals from citizens, politicians and groups such as the Catholic Church calling for the elder Díaz's safe release.
Media coverage of the kidnapping also showed how delicate peace negotiations in Colombia were and the broad array of opinions on how to proceed, the effectiveness of a president, the Total Peace initiative and guerrilla groups involved, and the role of the media in framing such topics, all underlying how the symbolic power of sport can cut across all such boundaries, even in a time of crisis.
"Especially in a country that is going through reconciliation after many years of war and negotiating with groups like the ELN," Orozco said. "Unfortunately, kidnappings are still happening in Colombia, and this particular incident resonated deeply with the public. It revealed how people feel about a beloved soccer player and show how a crisis like this can influence the broader peace process."
