On September the 7^th , in 2011, all players and managers in KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl were killed in a plane crash. Among the victims were the Swedish goalie Stefan Liv. The collective grief stroke not only his home district but gripped nationwide and also included people far beyond Sweden’s borders. Men and women, old and young, addicted fans and people totally indifferent to ice hockey expressed personal sorrow and sympathy with Stefan Liv’s family, friends and home team HV71.

The vast majority of these grieving people had never met Stefan Liv in person. Yet people mourned, as one does when a close and dear person passed away. Interviews, with a selection of local people of different origin, age, gender and interest in ice hockey, show how close this relation was. The interviews display varied but also consistent perceptions about Stefan Liv as a role model, both on and off the ice hockey rink. Besides these perceptions may have been formed under the influence of recurring media representations of the goal keeper, interviews indicated that media contributed to the reproduction of the ongoing collective grief, partly by retelling their own representations, and partly by publishing bereaved people’s private memories and perceptions of Stefan Liv.  

In light of sociological theory of collective memory, and drawing on agenda setting and reception theory, this extended abstract examines the relation between bereaved people’s memories and images and the media representations of an admired and mortally wounded sports celebrity. Through a content analysis of local media coverage during the weeks after the accident, the media representation of Stefan Liv is constructed. This is compared with the interviewees’ perception in order to highlight the link between the local media agenda setting effects and the media consumers’ reception.