Relaying Rio Through an Australian Gaze: Australian Nationalistic Broadcast Focus in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games

Abstract

This study explored how potential national biases unfolded within the Australian broadcast of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. Applying social identity theory and self-categorization theory, this study content analyzed a total of 45 prime time broadcast hours of Australia’s Seven Network’s coverage of the Rio Games. Although the majority of top 20 most-mentioned athletes were Australian, non-Australian athletes were mentioned more frequently regarding total name mentions. Moreover, Australian athletes and non-Australian athletes were described in significantly different manners when ascribing reasons for athletic success and failure. This study contributed to the literature by uncovering how in-group members were portrayed in the Australian sports context while also providing insight into how consumers’ media consumption could potentially affect how the network broadcast the Olympics from a nationally partisan perspective.

Representation of Sportswomen in the Online Version of Ukrainian Daily Newspaper “Segodnya”

“…Situation with women's sport coverage changes during Olympic Games when media pay more attention to compatriot women athletes and gender is outweighed by national pride for sport achievements (Vincent et al 2018;Billings et al 2019;Scott et al 2019). Billings et al (2014) examined coverage of Olympics by NBC and revealed that during 2012 Games «the first time women received more overall clock-time than men, the first time women tallied more appearances than men in the most-mentioned athletes category, and the first time women athletes received more overall mentions than male athletes.» The researchers explain the salience of women athletes in the air by the fact that women's team surpassed the achievements of men's team and won more medals.…”

A Summer Country’s Coverage of a Winter Event: Australian Nationalistic Broadcast Focus of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games

“…K. M. Scott et al, 2012; Vincent & Crossman, 2012). Nationalized coverage of sporting events occurs worldwide, from America (Angelini et al, 2012; Billings et al, 2008) to Canada (Angelini et al, 2017; MacArthur et al, 2017), Australia (Eagleman et al, 2014; O. Scott et al, 2019; O.…”

“…As a result, researchers have used the number of name mentions of home nation and foreign athletes to examine the salience of nationality during Olympic broadcasts. For example, Scott et al (2019) found that since the majority of named athletes during Australian coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games were Australian, viewers’ opinions of Australia’s success may have been skewed due to the frequency of Australians named in coverage. Similarly, Angelini and colleagues (2017) found that from a Canadian broadcaster, all of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes of the 2014 Winter Olympics were Canadian.…”

“…Using name mentions has been widely applied in the sport setting to assess coverage devoted to home and foreign athletes during international sporting events (Billings et al, 2008; Xu et al, 2018). Accordingly, two hypotheses were constructed based on proposed cross-national similarities between what previously has been found in the Australian context and what has been found in international studies (Eagleman et al, 2014; MacArthur et al, 2016; O. Scott et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2017): Hypothesis 1: The majority of the 20 most-mentioned athletes in Australian prime-time broadcasts of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games will be Australian relative to their proportion of participation. Hypothesis 2: Australians will represent the majority of total athlete mentions in Australian prime-time broadcasts of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games relative to their proportion of participation.…”

“…The desire for television networks to feature content from the home nation is “just intelligent programming” (Billings, 2008, p. 65), as NBC Olympic commentator Jim Lampley once said. While research in understanding how the Olympics are portrayed from an Australian context is growing (Billings et al, 2019; Knight et al, 2005; O. Scott et al, 2019; O.…”