Major sports events, image projection and the problems of 'semi-periphery': A case study of the 1996 South Asia cricket World Cup

Mega-events as a Response to Poverty Reduction: The 2010 FIFA World Cup and its Urban Development Implications

“…Developing countries are generally projected in a negative light and media outlets tend to perpetuate rather than challenge these images. The 1996 Cricket World Cup in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka serves as an example of this (Dimeo and Kay 2004). This is particularly relevant to the South African context, where the international and local media have already cast doubt internationally over the ability of South Africa to successfully host the World Cup and have publicly touted potential alternative host countries.…”

‘The Shame Games’: a textual analysis of Western press coverage of the Commonwealth Games in India

“…By focusing on the Commonwealth Games in India, this study addresses one of the criticisms of Dimeo and Kay, who point to the bias in academic research towards events and issues in the 'Western, English-speaking world', while ignoring events in the 'semi periphery' nations. 43 Indian elites and elites in other developing countries do need to think twice before hosting major international sporting events in their country, given the structural problems and the focus that these events draw to the existing problems.…”

“…Dimeo and Kay state that the Western media's focus on mismanagement, incompetence and disparaging the hosting of international sporting events in developing countries as a fiasco of poor management are anxieties of the West related to globalisation. 38 Examining the discourse in a global context, Van Dijk explains: 'instead of the predicted end of history, or the end of ideology, we, on the contrary, observe a monumental social and political lapsus, a return to more primitive historical and ideological times'. 39 The negative news coverage and extensive use of pre-existing negative stereotypes painted a picture of India as a third world country that is poor, backward, corrupt and fraught with problems, and thereby challenged its rising status in the world, as well as reducing its 'soft power' in the world.…”

“…Dimeo and Kay write that the Australian national stereotype is that of a 'sporty' nation and thus 'issues of racism, sexism, harassment of homeless people, and so on, are assumed to be a marginal part of national culture' and rarely highlighted in news reports. 32 Unfortunately for India the stereotype is that of a poor nation and thus that remains the focus of the news stories, irrespective of what event is being covered.…”

Racist and neo-Nazi panic in the Euro 2012 coverage by the British press: a discursive failure in interculturalism

“…On the one hand, the media spend a great deal of their resources on sports; newspapers dedicate special sections to sport news and commentary, they employ large numbers of sports columnists and reporters, and sports programming constitutes a substantial part of television and radio networks as well as of various online media formats (Wenner 1998;Raney and Bryant 2006;Billings and Hardin 2014). Yet, academic research on mediated sports in today's world points to the perpetuation of nationalism, social stratifications and cultural prejudices by various forms of "othering" in sports reporting and representations of athletes (Bishop and Jaworski 2003;Wensing and Bruce 2003;Bruce, 2004;Dimeo and Kay 2004;Hardin et al 2004;Maguire et al 2009;Inthorn 2010;Hammett 2011;Mishra 2012;Bruce 2015).…”