Encoding the Olympics

Encoding the Olympics assembles a uniquely representative international team of media experts to provide a comprehensive review of the global impact of media and cultural communications associated with the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Commissioned by the IOC, this pioneering comparative study - the largest in Olympic Games research -provides a ground-breaking, panoramic, cross-cultural perspective on media responses to the leading sports event of the modern world. The representative team that undertook the study includes media commentators and political analysts, sport and media journalists, Sinologists and observers of the Asian Pacific Rim, academics in Olympic Studies and media and communication studies, scholars of the cultural and sociology studies of sport and festival and events managers. Encoding the Olympics provides a unique, encyclopaedic study that will serve as a versatile resource at several levels - as a textbook or source reference for academic institutions, media public relations agencies that facilitate the work of inter-cultural exchange organisations, and international communication departments of multinational enterprises and international NGOs. This volume analyses global media responses to a mega-sport event on a scale never before attempted. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Luo Qing is General Secretary of the MLeague Secretariat (International League of Higher Education of in Media and Communication), Associate Professor in Communication University of China; Visiting Professor at the University of Lugano and Comundus-Erasmus Programme of European Union. Giuseppe Richeri is Professor at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, and the director of the Chinese Media Observatory, University of Lugano, Switzerland.

Preface IOC Foreword Introduction 1. Prologue: When West Met East through the Beijing Olympics 2. Attitudes Towards China Before and After the Beijing Olympics Part One: Another Long March of the Symbolic Holy Flame - Comparative Analysis on the Media Coverage of the Torch Relay 2008 3. Greece: The Olympic Torch Relay in Ancient Olympia - An Ideal Showcase for International Political Protest 4. France: A Conflict of Values? The Olympic Torch Relay in Paris - The Mass Media Were on Cue 5. The Run-up to the Beijing Olympics in Switzerland and Italy 6. Authoritarianism, Opacity and Proxies: The 2008 Olympic Torch Relay in the Italian Media 7. Germany: A German Approach to Balance and Complexity 8. Spain: Media Focus on the Geopolitical Issues of a Major Sporting Event 9. Australia: Mediated Representation of Global Politics 10. Brazil: Cultural Enchantment - The Beijing Olympic Games Torch Lighting Ceremony and Torch Relay: Brazil's Warm-up Coverage 11. Japan: What Did the Torch Illuminate? A Narrative Analysis of Japanese Newspapers' Reporting of the Nagano Torch Relay 12. The Construction of a Media Reality in Reporting the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay: The Case of the Beijing Evening News Part Two: Representing the Opening Ceremony 13. Representing the Opening Ceremony: Comparative Content Analysis from USA, Brazil, UK and China Part Three: Understanding the Multi-Dimensions of Mediated Olympics 14. Spain: The Power of a Mega Event which Eclipses Criticism 15. France: The Beijing Olympics 2008, Revisiting History to Build a New Future? 16. Beijing Olympics between Media, Sport and Politics: Perspectives from the Swiss and Italian Media 17. The Good, the Fake and the Cyborg: The Broadcast and Coverage of Beijing 2008 Olympics in Italy 18. A Very Olympian Year! The Observation from Australia 19. Brazil - Beijing Changes the Way Mega-media Events are Presented: Perspectives on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games 20. A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Japanese Television News Coverage of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony 21. Mirroring the Olympic Games - The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the American Media 22. A Case Study of NBC Nightly News 23. A Case Study of CCTV News 30 (China) Part Four: Perspectives 24. Encoding the Olympics - Visual Hegemony? Discussion and Interpretation on Intercultural Communication in the Beijing Olympic Games 25. Epilogue: Give Me Please, a Pair of Eyes with Buddha's Insight