Problemformulering och syfte: Begreppet sportswashing har blivit mer och mer utbrett under senare år, oavsett om det har att göra med OS i Kina, fotbolls-VM i Qatar eller något helt annat. Syftet med denna C-uppsats är att undersöka hur sportswashing gestaltas i svenskmedia. Mer specifikt, gestaltas det generellt positivt, negativt eller neutralt? Därtill finns mer beskrivande frågeställningar som är kopplade till vilka sporter och länder som gestaltas i artiklarna. Det finns även kategorier kopplade till vilka ämnen som gestaltas och antalet gånger ordet ‘sportswashing’ nämns, men de tillhör inte de tre huvudsakliga frågeställningarna. Metod och material: Materialet består av totalt 100 st artiklar publicerade mellan 2019 och 2022 från Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen och SVT Nyheter. Studiens metod är en kvantitativ innehållsanalys och artiklarna har kodats utifrån ett kodschema. Huvudresultat: Resultaten visar tydligt att sportswashing generellt gestaltas negativt i svenskmedia. Det framkom även att fotboll är sporten som gestaltas överlägset mest i artiklar om sportswashing i svensk media. Landet som gestaltades mest i artiklar om sportswashing i svensk media var Qatar, tätt följt av Saudiarabien

Många skulle påstå att fotboll är världens största sport och intresserar flest personer över hela världen jämfört med andra sporter. Fotboll är mer än bara fotboll. Till viss del är det två lag som springer efter en boll, men för många som inte själva inte är på fotbollsplanen innebär sporten så mycket mer. Herd (2016) skriver att supportrar är hängivna till sina lag oavsett om laget vinner eller förlorar. Supportrar går på matcher för att stötta sitt lag med hjälp av flaggor och sånger. Abosag et al., (2012) skriver att lojalitet är bandet mellan fotbollslaget och supportrarna, och just den starka lojaliteten är något som andra varumärken bara kan drömma om. Edensor (2015) hävdar att stämningen är en avgörande del för supportrar när de går på matcher, och att fotbollsarenor är som en sluten teater där dramat som fotbollen skapar utspelas. Att just stämningen är en faktor tar även Leslie-Walker & Mulvenna (2022) upp då de skriver att det sociala umgänget är en faktor till varför personer går på fotbollsmatcher. Med de lokala supportrarnas lojalitet och fotbollslags kommersialisering så har relationen påverkats mellan de två parterna. Edensor (2015) skriver att kommersialiseringen har påverkat atmosfären negativt, och hänvisar till att det är supportrarna som driver upp stämningen på en match som ett resultat av det som händer på planen. Edensor (2015) hävdar att kommersialiseringen har skapat en växande diskussion kring att de politiska aspekterna tar mer plats i klubbar och landslag, vilket har fått en del att hävda att fotbollen har tappat sin kärna vilket är de lokala supportrarna vars platser tagit över av tillströmning av icke lokala supportrar som till exempel affärspartners till klubben. På grund av det mattas atmosfären av och stämningen brister. Under de senaste åren har begreppet sportswashing florerat i media. Det finns ingen officiell definition kring begreppet, då det är relativ outforskat men Fruh et al., (2022) definierar det så här, sportswashing är ett fenomen som används av människor, företag eller länder för att genom idrott skapa ett bättre rykte. Med tanke på att just supportrarna har ett såpass starkt band till sina lag kommer den här studien att belysa supporters åsikter kring sportswashing och hur det påverkade konsumtion och engagemang under senaste världsmästerskapet i fotboll 2022.

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Sportswashing is a process of trying to improve a state’s reputation via sport. A state which systematically infringe on its citizens human rights has, more than likely, a bad reputation internationally, something that it tries to alter by drawing attention to sports related events.The desirable result which sportswashing is meant to accomplish is the minimisation of, or the distraction away from the human rights violation. Ultimately, the responsibility is on the sportswashing state, but according to earlier research sportswashing has two unintended consequences, namely 1) it corrupts sport and its innate values, 2) it makes people involved in sports in different ways complicit in human rights violations. Therefore, everyone has a moral responsibility to counteract sportswashing. The purpose of this master thesis is to establish how the responsibility for sportswashing should be distributed. The media and earlier research claims that athletes have a responsibility to counteract sportswashing. This paper formulates two questions regarding moral responsibility and sportswashing: 1) To what extent do athletes have a moral responsibility to counteract sportswashing? 2) to what extent do sports organizations have a moral responsibility to counteract sportswashing? To answer these questions 27 media articles were analysed by an analysis of argumentation, this to establish claims to why or why not athletes or sports organizations have a moral responsibility to counteract sportswashing. The following step of the analysis was the critical analysis of the claim’s logic plausibility, its tenability, and lastly its normative plausibility. The results indicate that sports organizations have the moral responsibility, although the athletes are not morally responsible for sportswashing, they are responsible for their participation in moral wrong that sportswashing produces. Therefore, if or when, sports organizations are unwilling to or unable to counteract sportswashing, athletes have a moral responsibility to put pressure on these organizations and oppose the social norms and values that condone sportswashing. The amount of responsibility that an athlete will receive will be based on the power to act, which is established by analysing an athlete’s power capital, i.e. economic power, cultural standing, political power, and lastly, discursive influence.

The world of football has changed dramatically in recent years. At present the game has developed into something more than just a ball and a pitch, and the political aspects of football can not be underestimated. In terms of audience football is the biggest sport in the world, and the attention that the huge tournaments bring has become of major interest for authoritarian forces. During 2022 the world cup of football will be hosted by Qatar, and the controversies surrounding the tournament are many and have certainly caught the eye of the media. The aim of this study is to examine how Qatar as organizer of the world cup is portrayed in Swedish, American and Qatari news media based on the reporting on working conditions prior to the tournament. By implementing a discourse analysis inspired by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory we have analyzed how the arrangement is portrayed by examining choice of words, subjects, meaning and context in the chosen material. The content to be analyzed consists of articles from Aftonbladet, Washington Times and Gulf Times that have been selected by using a given time period and specific keywords. The results show that there are big differences in how Qatar is portrayed in news media from various parts of the world. Western media tends to portray Qatar as an authoritarian state with poor human rights and transparency in the process that surrounds working conditions leading up to the world cup. On the other hand, Qatari media attempts to produce an image of a groundbreaking tournament that has led to major improvements in developing labour legislation in Qatar and will be a historical event for the Middle East. The conclusions show that Swedish and American news media bases its reporting on Western values of a democracy  and how an organizer of a global event like the world cup should live up to these. The representation in the material from Aftonbladet and Washington Times indicates that Qatar does not live up to these values and ideals and is therefore an inappropriate organizer of the tournament. Qatari media respond to this criticism by defending their position as organizer of the world cup by highlighting the improvements that have been made due to the tournament and by trying to clarify that the information about horrible working conditions in the country is incorrect.

Saudi Arabia has been accused of sportswashing, an attempt to improve its reputation through buying the English football club Newcastle United. The purpose of this paper is to explore through a discourse analysis how Saudi Arabia's action to acquire Newcastle United can be seen as an exercise of power, and whether and how the images presented construct and reinforce orientalist discourses about the Saudi state and the region. The discourse analysis is conducted using Laclau and Mouffe's methodology and the theoretical framework applied is Joseph Nye's soft power, Edward Said's Orientalism and hegemony. Based on the international newspaper The Guardian and the human rights organization Amnesty International, orientalist discourses have been identified and the purchase of Newcastle United has resulted in soft disempowerment effects for Saudi Arabia. Local newspaper The Chronicle also constructed orientalist discourses about the state of Saudi Arabia but legitimizes the purchase of Newcastle United making the soft power exercise successful.

The purpose of this study is to examine how FIFA and Amnesty portray the football World Cup in Qatar 2022 differently on their respective Twitter accounts. For context, the topic regarding Qatar being granted to host the World Cup has been a heated discussion ever since its inception in 2010 when FIFA officially announced it for the first time. Common arguments against the decision were usually about Qatar not having any prior record of a “football culture” as well as there being accusations of them buying their way into becoming a host nation. Qatar later also came under fire after sources showed evidence that the country imposed “slave-like” conditions on migrant workers building their cities and football arenas, with reports estimating 6,500 migrant worker deaths in the country since 2010. Knowing this information surrounding the World Cup 2022, this study aims to quantitatively analyse the differences in content and framings published on Twitter by FIFA, the organization running the event, and Amnesty, a non-governmental organization focused on human rights. Framing theory and agenda-setting theory were used as tools to examine 150 tweets under the time period spanning from December 2, 2010 to November 20, 2022. The findings of the analysis show dominatingly negative tweets from Amnesty regarding the World Cup, whereas FIFA have remained neutral but mostly positive. The results of the analysis also show signs of sportswashing being a contributing factor in the different framings of the World Cup between the accounts.

Saudi Arabia has been accused of sportswashing, which involves attempting to enhance its reputation by acquiring the English football club, Newcastle United. This study aims to conduct a framing analysis to explore how Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of Newcastle United can be perceived as an exercise of soft power and how the portrayed images in media construct and reinforce orientalist and eurocentric perspectives about Saudi Arabia and the region. This study analyzes the coverage from the media outlets The Guardian, Dagens Nyheter and the Saudi-based Al Arabiya. It focuses on how the media shapes and presents the image of Saudi Arabia in connection with the acquisition of Newcastle United and to what extent orientalist representations are reflected. Furthermore, the study’s findings indicate that orientalist depictions are identified to a certain extent, particularly in the coverage from The Guardian and Dagens Nyheter. The acquisition of Newcastle United has also resulted in increased soft power effects for Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi-newspaper Al Arabiya constructs a more positive narrative around acquisition of the football club, which can impact both local and global perceptions of the event.

Both Qatar and FIFA have been heavily criticised for the bribes and corruption resulting in Qatar obtaining the FIFA World Cup 2022. Over 6500 migrant workers in Qatar are said to have lost their lives during the construction of new arenas, and the media is an essential part for this being acknowledged. This essay examines and identifies the discourses that are dominating the articles written in the awakening of FIFAs World Cup in Qatar 2022. This will be done through studying the portrayal of Qatar in Dagens Nyheter, the Guardian and Gulf Times. The articles are studied through a narrative analysis method with support from agenda setting, framing and gatekeeping theories. The results show that western media portrays Qatar as unworthy of the world cup, while Qatari media ensures that the country will create the greatest world cup in history. The results suggest that Qatar is guilty of sportswashing through their government-controlled media.

Football is the world's most practiced sport. Historically, countries worldwide have employed the positive attributes of sports as a means of propaganda to present a more favorable image of their nation to a global audience. Recently, countries such as Russia, China, Qatar, and now Saudi Arabia have been accused of sportswashing. Football star Cristiano Ronaldo became the first to depart from European elite football and move to the untested Saudi Professional League, with several elite European players following suit. In 2023, voices emerged, accusing Saudi Arabia of sportswashing and questioning the underlying motives. Research acknowledges the prevalence of sportswashing in contemporary times, yet there is a dearth of studies examining sports journalism's coverage of it. This thesis explores how the sports journalists of Swedish Expressen and Saudi Arab News cover the substantial investments in the Saudi Professional League. The empirical material comprises a total of 20 articles, evenly sourced from respective news outlets. These articles underwent a comparative qualitative text analysis. Given Saudi Arabia's geographical location within the historical Orient, it is pertinent to analyze how Western sports journalism reports on football in Saudi Arabia through the theoretical lenses of orientalism and eurocentrism. Furthermore, the study explores how Saudi sports journalism legitimizes itself through the perspectives of occidentalism and ethnocentrism. The study's findings reveal that Expressen incorporates elements of both orientalism and eurocentrism in their articles. In response to European football leaking top footballers to Saudi Arabia, Expressen resorts to both orientalist and eurocentric criticism in its arguments. In an attempt to reaffirm European superiority and diminish the emerging influence of Saudi Arabia. Conversely, Arab News predominantly employs ethnocentric arguments to position Saudi Arabia among the absolute global elite without substantial scrutiny. / Fotboll är världens mest utövade sport. Historiskt har länder världen över nyttjat sportens positiva egenskaper som ett propagandaverktyg för att ge omvärlden en bättre bild av landet. I absolut närtid är Ryssland, Kina, Qatar och nu senast Saudiarabien exempel på länder som anklagats för sporttvätt. Cristiano Ronaldo tillsammans med flera av Europas elitspelare har lämnat den europeiska fotbollen för den obeprövade Saudi Professional League. Under 2023 höjdes röster världen över som anklagade Saudiarabien för sporttvätt och ifrågasatte motiven bakom spelarnas flyttar. Forskning visar att sporttvätt i modern tid är ett faktum, men det saknas studier om sportjournalistikens rapportering om dessa länder. Denna studie undersöker hur sportjournalisterna hos svenska Expressens respektive saudiska Arab News rapporterar om de omfattande satsningarna på den saudiska fotbollsligan. Det genom en kvalitativ jämförande textanalys med teoretiska verktyg från representationsteorin, orientalismen, eurocentrismen, occidentalismen samt etnocentrismen för att synliggöra historiska dolda värderingar, kritiska mot Saudiarabien respektive Västerlandet. Eftersom Saudiarabien geografiskt är en del av den historiska Orienten är det relevant att analysera hur västerländsk sportjournalistik rapporterar om saudisk fotboll. Samt i relation hur saudiska sportjournalister legitimerar Saudiarabien. Studiens empiriska material består av totalt 20 artiklar, lika många från respektive tidning. Resultatet visar att Expressen i respons till att den europeiska elitfotbollen läcker toppspelare till Saudiarabien använder både orientalistisk och eurocentrisk kritik i sin argumentation. Det görs för att bekräfta den europeiska överhögheten och förminska uppstickaren Saudiarabien. Arab News å andra sidan använder främst etnocentriska argument för att positionera Saudiarabien bland den absoluta världseliten utan någon egentlig prövning.