MEGA EVENTS AND NEW MEDIA

DR DAVID MCGILLIVRAY READER IN EVENTS AND CULTURE

“The ones who make the World Cup are the radios and televisions that buy and – by favouring a billion and a half television viewers – “produce” the championship. Those absent from the stadium are always right, economically and massively. They have the power.” (Lottinger & Virilio, 1997)

WHAT ABOUT MOBILES AND TABLETS?

“Official representations and discourses of mega sports events are challenged and (re) formulated. New (mobile) media permits the ‘fan’ (soccer) or ‘citizen’ (Olympics) to subvert imposed structure/message and meanings associated with events space – or does it?”

“Technology allows for the participation, distillation and instant mediatization of the fan experience. The fan is targeted (e.g. in Fan Parks), experiential performances caught and looped back to the ‘lived’ and live audiences”

“Spectators use… mobile phones to take pictures of incidents within the ground, on of off the field, and instantly send those photos to either friends who are absent from the stadium or, increasingly, to new media companies that request fans’ pictures of events at games as part of their user generated content news gathering’ (Redhead, 2007, p238)

New media aligns with notion of accelerated modernity (Redhead, 2007: 230) evident in mediatized sporting events. Speed, of communication and representation a feature of the accelerated ME spectacle, creating challenges of control and management for event owners and corporate sponsors alike  

Increasing capitalization of football has led football clubs (and fans) to bypass the mainstream media and develop their own independent/direct forms of communication with global audience (Dart, 2009). Facilitated by technology and shift from read-only to read-write model

However, lack of evidence that independent new media sites (e.g. blogs) able to compete with established media – rather, mainstream media use digital presence to direct traffic to their content – ‘borrowing’ principles of UGC and participatory media cultures

Team webpages Multiple websites – Read-only

Blogs, national webpages, FIFA webpages, YouTube – Read-write...ish Twitter

Facebook Blogs Live Streams Mobile apps – Read-write-video, create…

FIFA WORLD CUP & NEW MEDIA

THE ‘OFFICIAL’ NARRATIVE - CONTROL

Social Media ambushing used effectively by ‘unofficial’ brands to reach World Cup audience

CORPORATE SPONSORS

SA2010 ONLINE STATS

CORPORATE APPROPRIATION

MONITORING TOOLS TO ASSESS TRAFFIC AND SENTIMENT

07WORLD CUP SECURITY / SHARE OF VOICE

Share of voiceThis metric represents the breakdown of mentions about the keyword by specific platforms. The breakdownis based on total number of mentions per platform. This is important when you're trying to figure out wheremost of the conversation is happening and where you should focus your listening and engagement efforts.Top stories on the top platforms provides a sense of what people are mostly talking about regarding thekeyword on each individual platform.

Twitter

5198 reactions

Facebook

584 reactions

Blogs

79 reactions

Friendfeed

47 reactions

Reddit

16 reactions

Googlebuzz

15 reactions

TOP STORIES ON TWITTER TOP STORIES ON FACEBOOK

snap of the match: fan punc...http://twitpic.com/24h1pq | on: July 11 2010

5282 online comments

World Cup 2010: It takes tw...http://www.newzfor.me/news/63409583.aspx | on: July 08 2010

46 online comments

World Cup 2010: Fabio Capel...http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2890/w... | on: July 03 2010

26 online comments

Same manager, but new approach is needed for Euro 2012 to be a success... So two wrongs can make a right after all, then. First the Football Association remove a

snap of the match: fan punc...http://twitpic.com/24h1pq | on: July 11 2010

5 online comments

Fan punched to ground by se...http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic... | on: July 12 2010

1 online comments

Last updated at 8:42 AM on 12th July 2010 A serial pitch invader was punched to the ground by a security guard as he stormed the Soccer City ground and threw

“Alternative' (socio-political) discourses 'crowded out’ after ‘peaks' of activity in social media found at ceremonies (opening/closing)

Pre-SA2010, a ‘discourse of fear’ was evident on new media coverage - threat of violence to visiting fans, killings in SA and spending on security

During tournament, only sporadic commentary on wider socio-political and economic issues. New media did ‘shine a light’ on these issues at times but football ‘chatter’ (and mainstream sport media narrative) drowns out meaningful critical discourse

RACE

WHAT ABOUT THE OLYMPICS?

“Given the trends towards convergences and consolidation of ownership, the likelihood of a spiral of silence emerges, in which fringe minority voices get less hearing and are gradually brought into conformity…the hegemony of the privileged over web content and values will marginalise less powerful groups as it has in other media” (Real, 2007, p. 182)

No obvious social new media/citizen media movement associated with FIFA World Cup – rather, the evidence points towards open, participatory and involved strategies being appropriated by corporate/official sports media agenda – assisted by tight FIFA control over media accreditation around World Cup

Because of the philosophy of Olympism, its international reach, avowed apolitical aims and (relatively) recent commercial success, the Olympics is a site of contestation over media. Media rights value has grown exponentially over last decades, though accompanied by concerns over politics, values, engagement, ownership and control

IOC EMBRACES SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2009

The IOC has secured riches from media rights sales but is now caught between two stools – engage youth markets (crucial) through new (social software) media technologies whilst at same time maintaining valuable financial agreements with official sponsors based on ‘exclusivity’ of exposure  

culture

MEDIA

Art

participation

apolitical

OLYMPIC

DIGITAL

Citizen journalism

Digital Britain

3G legacy

Nations Regions

community media

#MEDIA2012

13,000 broadcast journalists

7,000 print journalists

12,000 non-accredited media

60,000,000 with camera phones ready to shoot and

report

London 2012 media landscape

Previous Games

“W2 is the first independent media centre to work with an Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games”

“True North Media house accredits a 5-year old as a journalist and an Olympic mascot”

Vancouver 2010

VANOC appoints a number of young people to be its official citizen journalism team during the Games

AN INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT

“If the Olympic movement can expand media participation without jeopardizing its financial base, then it can more adequately fulfill its role as a progressive social movement.

Olympic citizen journalists are already taking ownership of reporting their Games and they will need a structure for their participation in 2012.”

“To achieve a broader media participatory culture, it is necessary to develop an extended media network for Games time reporting, which builds on the strategic development of non-accredited media centres at previous Games, linking them to citizen media projects.”

“Such a network would be founded on principles of ‘open media’ and will facilitate community legacies and build stories about London, the Nations and the Regions that reach an international audience. It will focus on reporting all non-sporting legacy stories. Its work will transcend national boundaries in ways that no other Games has achieved before, by promoting peer-to-peer conversations.”

Goals Augment the Olympic media narrative

towards portraying broader dimensions of the philosophy of Olympism

Create public engagement "around Games time

Promote community legacy for the nations and regions

What this can do for the accredited Olympic media

Media organizations in the UK will traverse the country around Games time, requiring facilities and stories we

can provide, particularly around the torch relay

To fully report on the London 2012 Games, it will be necessary to see what is happening in the Nations

and Regions

The Olympic Games is a social movement, not a sporting event. What happens in the country will

become its central legacy

“Boundaries blurring between new and mainstream media as each extends reach into others’ territory. There is evidence of the (successful) appropriation of new media by the corporate sport-media nexus – a tsunami of narrative serves to reduce ‘space’ for alternative discourses”

“Yet, controlling the mega event message is increasingly difficult as established broadcast media strategies collide with the networking capacity of web 2.0 and the popularity of social software to communicate alternative readings of events quickly”

“Initiatives like #media2012 provide an alternative ‘space’ (and platform) to report mega events, free of imposed guidelines and restricted editorial control – but need to avoid falling into new media silo or bubble”

“Researching new media and mega events demands more online research following new fan communities – including the development of metrics for visualising their influence and archiving to capture/retain it”

“We need for more research into the power of the new media narrative in shaping the ‘story’ of major events. The focus needs to be less on volume (quantitative) and more on sentiment and influence (qualititative)– so that we can understand the power relations between official and alternative narratives and how these are mediated”

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