Department of Political Science

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Browsing Department of Political Science by Subject "2010 FIFA World Cup"

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    International media portrayals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ : an analysis of British and American print media, 2004-2010
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-12) Moloi-Siga, Kgothatso; Cornelissen, Scarlett; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Political Science.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The onset of democracy in South Africa in 1994 was accompanied by the rise in bids for, and the hosting of sports mega-events so as to accomplish national interests and goals. This was done with the purpose of rebranding the South African image to the international community through national and international campaigns that sought to highlight the country’s aspirant status as a rainbow nation and its pan-Africanist ideals. This study investigates how, as host for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, South Africa was reported on by two international online media newspapers, The New York Times (United States of America (USA)) and the Guardian (United Kingdom (UK)). The aim is to address an understudied aspect of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ by reflecting systematically on the tone and content of international media portrayals of the event, both before and during the tournament. The study has two focuses. Firstly, it considers the motives for South Africa’s bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. Secondly, it appraises the content and nature of reporting in the two overseas newspapers. The study uses a mix of secondary and primary sources, which include academic journals, books, websites, newspaper articles and government and the FIFA websites. The findings of this study suggest that the bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ was based on the country’s positive experience from hosting previous sports mega-events. Additionally, South Africa wanted to showcase its commercial maturity, its development of physical infrastructure, and the presence of human skills. The motives underpinning the bid aimed at dispelling and challenging international misconceptions of the African continent. The novelty of an African country bidding to stage and hosting a sport mega-event such as the FIFA World Cup™ resulted in the country gaining extensive international media coverage from The New York Times and the Guardian. The qualitative and quantitative content analysis from these two newspapers yielded some commonality and recurrence of words such as: “stadium”, “tickets”, ‘vuvuzela”, “crime”, and “security”. The differences between the two newspapers were minimal, supporting the liberal-pluralist theoretical claim that the media acts as an agenda setter, and in line with the Marxist theory of the ideological role of the media. Media coverage of sports mega-events is important and influential in determining the way in which the host country is branded, and future studies are necessary to address the