The Role of Media in Enhancing People’s Perception of Hosting a Mega Sport Event: The Case of Pyeongchang’s Winter Olympics Bids
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Residents’ support for hosting the Olympic Games is crucial for a bid to succeed in the Olympic host-city selection process. Because of the vital role of the media in framing public perceptions of Olympic bids, the purpose of this study was to examine media coverage of hosting the Olympic Games during the Olympic host-city bid process. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on newspaper articles about Pyeongchang, Korea. Pyeongchang was a candidate city for 3 consecutive bids for the Winter Olympic Games, and it finally won its latest bid to host the 2018 Games. Six hundred Korean newspaper articles were collected for analysis. The results indicated that positive, nationwide discussions of hosting the Olympic Games were presented during the successful bid. Infrastructure legacy was mentioned frequently and dominantly for both successful and unsuccessful bid periods, whereas the presence of sport-development and sociocultural-legacy themes increased in the latest, successful, bid. In addition, extensive coverage related to celebrity endorsement was found during the successful bid.
Kim and Kaplanidou are with the Dept. of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management, and Choi, the College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Address author correspondence to Ari Kim at akim@hhp.ufl.edu
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