Sport or politics? Critical discourse analysis of European media coverage of Sochi Olympic Games 2014

Abstract

This paper examines how media and news reports in particular contribute to the construction of images on a particular event. For the purpose of it, the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi were chosen as a global media event owning to its controversial nature and various issues connected with these Games. The data were gathered from two prominent English-speaking news bureaus in Europe and examined to establish how centers of traditional Olympic stream and Western ideology comment on the Games hosted by an ideologically, politically and culturally different country. In attempt to address the aim, the research explores the thematic organisation (topics coverage) and the resources of appraisal in the articles dedicated to Sochi 2014. Despite its manual nature, the research combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of data. The findings revealed that all news bureaus constructed a negative evaluation of Sochi 2014 by means of the use of emotive language and selective coverage of topics relating either to the Games or to the host country. The paper is aimed to contribute to the existing research of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar and present a pioneering study on the Olympic discourse by means of these two theoretical models