The Mediatized Zlatan, Made by Sweden

The present article analyses the mediatization of the brand and celebrity Zlatan Ibrahimović using the reception and marketing of the footballer’s life story and autobiography as its main case. It is shown that the construction of a myth such as Ibrahimović transcends the materiality of the book as well as geographical, vernacular and media boundaries, as it is constituted as content in a digital network that produces signification. This ‘Zlatan content’ is framed by national Swedish values and a traditional Western myth of individual masculine excellence. It is also marked by emotions, class and race, telling a tale about the marginalized emotive immigrant becoming both a national icon and part of an imaginary Western ghetto experience and global literary canon formation. It is argued that the performance of excitable speech acts is crucial in the mediatization and branding of mass market literature and celebrities such as Ibrahimović.