The Emotional Labour of Esports Coaching A Qualitative Discourse Analysis of Publicly Available Media
The Emotional Labour of Esports Coaching: A Qualitative Discourse Analysis of Publicly Available Media Abstract Esports coaching has emerged as a distinct occupational role characterised by high performance expectations, constant public visibility, and intensive interpersonal work with young athletes. While a small but growing body of survey- and interview-based research has begun to document stressors and burnout among esports coaches, far less is known about how the emotional demands of the role are represented outside of the research interview that is, in the everyday public discourse through which coaches, players, and organisations narrate the job to audiences. This paper develops a nine-category coding framework for the emotional labour of esports coaching stress, pressure, emotional regulation, conflict, responsibility, failure, burnout, player welfare, and public criticism grounded in Hochschild's (1983) theory of emotional labour and its extension...