My diploma thesis is occupied with television processing and presentation of Olympic Games. Especially, I decided to analyse the summer Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 and Rio de Janeiro 2016. Both of these Olympic Games brought the new way of television broadcasting. Thanks to the exclusive ownership of broadcasting rights and technological advances, Czech Television has decided to broadcast on both television programs on a continuous basis 48 hours a day. The first part of my diploma thesis is occupied with the history of the Olympic Games, including their ancient civilization. From ancient history we move to the nineteenth century, when Pierre Coubertin came up with the idea to refresh the Olympic idea. After the introduction of Olympic history we will also focus on the relationship between media and sports and we also introduce the roots of Czech television broadcasting. In the analytical part of my diploma thesis we will describe the ways of Czech television processing during the summer Olympic Games in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro. This description will be supported by surveys with data of television ratings and differences between researched Olympic Games. This thesis will show how television broadcasting is developing in the Czech Republic, especially during the Olympic Games, which is one of...

The Master Thesis deals with the communication strategy of the Czech Olympic House in Rio de Janeiro during the XXXI. summer olympic games that will take place in 2016. The succesful Czech Olympic House in London is considered to be a groundwork for this strategy. There is a need to diversify, especialy because of the different characteristics of both destinations. The aim of this thesis is to find the optimal communication instruments and their application in the way that will respect the conditions of both czech and brazilian market. The emphasis is placed on the promotion of the Czech republic as a reliable business partner and attractive tourist destination.

Nationalism and globalisation are two topics of great debate. In an increasingly connected world, these concepts are contrasted as opposites unable to coexist with a rise in one there must be a fall in the other. In this study, these concepts are explored alongside Olympism through the medium of the Olympic Games. Historically, the Olympics are structured around nations/nation-states, and national teams, while still attempting to promote universalism, internationalism, and the unity of humankind. This work aims to explore how and why nationalism, Olympism, and globalisation are expressed in the Olympic Movement through a case study of the London 2012 Olympic Games and what the outcomes of these actions are. Backed by an interpretivist paradigm, this study focused on selected events in the lead-up to the London Games, starting in the summer of 2011, and culminated with a prolonged period of observation at the London Games, both at Olympic venues and the live site at Hyde Park. Throughout the course of data collection there was a focus on not only the institutions staging the Games but also the spectators taking part in them.

This thesis seeks to analyse to what extent, in what ways and with what success does the Chinese government seek to manage its interaction with sport globalisation in Olympic Movement, football and basketball? Held et al's (1999) conceptualisation of globalisation provides the major theoretical framework for the analysis. In order to analyse the behaviour of the Chinese state we adopt Houlihan's (1994) concepts of 'reach' and 'response' which focus attention on global actors and pressures external to the country and state (reach) and the capacity of states to determine their response. A set of quantitative and qualitative indicators of globalisation have been identified. Data were collected from a number of sources including official government documents, news media, and a series of 32 interviews with Chinese officials. The analysis reveals that the Chinese government has demonstrated a desire and a capacity to manage the impact of the Olympic Movement, global football and basketball on domestic sport practices; and second, the Chinese government has attempted, with reasonable success, to manage the impact of commercial interests on Chinese domestic football, basketball and other Olympic sports practices, elite athletes and professional clubs. However, a number of tensions exist: first, between the priorities of commercial clubs and national teams' development; and second, between the highly paid and internationally mobile 'star players' and the centrally controlled elite development system.

This thesis attempts to explore the discursive construction of Olympic ideology in the 2008 Torch Relay news coverage by the British and the Chinese media. It applies a corpus-based Discourse-Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis (DHA-CDA) to analyse how and why the complexity, contradiction and conflicts in linguistic interpretations of Olympism are demonstrated by the media discourse between East and West. This study first focuses on the underpinning ideology and the study of the media, considering the historical development of Olympic ideology (Olympism) along with the respective mainstream ideologies in Britain (Liberalism) and China (Harmony), as well as the philosophical foundations and prominence of CDA. It then draws on the elaborated analytical approach-corpus-based CDA-in detail to analyse four specially constructed corpora drawn from the China Daily, BBC News and The Guardian. Thereafter corpus techniques including frequency and concordance analysis are applied and results obtained that reveal comparative differences and diachronic shifts across the corpora. Having first described the data, they are then interpreted in their linguistic contexts, and subsequently explained in the broader historical and socio-political contexts surrounding the dynamic life of the Olympic Torch Relay. This study demonstrates that there are contrasting expressions of Olympic ideology in the media discourse of the two countries. At a deeper level, this social practice is revealed to be dominated by the mainstream ideologies of the hosting and participating nations, which have been entrenched throughout their respective histories. The involvement of Britain and China in Olympic history and the relevant socio-political events surrounding the 2008 Torch Relay are explored in order to inform our analysis. The conclusion to this thesis reinforces its significant contribution to the study of Olympism. The Olympic philosophy of integrating diversified ideologies was certainly not manifest in the confrontation between the eastern and western media in 2008. Liberalism and harmony had never confronted each other face to face on the world stage before or attempted to find a common ground on which to coexist as revealed in this study. Based on this, respect for and tolerance of diverse ideology, history and culture will hopefully promote the solidarity and prosperity represented by Olympism in the new era.

This thesis investigates how male and female athletes competing in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were portrayed in two British and two American newspapers (The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post). It also examines how the total amount of coverage was distributed between athletes of each gender. Previous studies have shown that female athletes are not given as much space as male athletes (Jones, 2004, Caple, Greenwood, & Lumby, 2011, Godoy-Pressland 2014) and that when they are reported on, not portrayed in the same way as male athletes (Eagleman, 2015). This can have negative effects for athletes and their sport (Knight & Giuliano, 2011). For this essay, a corpus was created out of articles from the four newspapers, which were subsequently analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings showed a greater equality in the amount of coverage provided by newspapers than had been shown by previous studies, but with such a small sample, results could not be generalised widely. For the qualitative analysis, articles from two specific events were analysed and determined to not contain any major differences between males and females, with only one exception, which was Los Angeles Times’ article on the women’s artistic gymnastics team all-around event.

The purpose of this study is to examine four Swedish newspapers views on female athletes in the Olympic Games in Mexico City 1968 and Barcelona 1992, and examine what information the Swedish public received through their reporting about the Olympic Games in Mexico City and Barcelona. The study is based on printed editions of the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, Kvällsposten and Idag.   The study is a quantitative content analysis, containing a total number of 68 articles. In this paper the theoretical perspective is based on the framing theory, where the focus is how the female athletics were depicted in the Swedish press.   The results show that the Swedish newspapers want to portray and communicate about the female athletics performance, which applies to both the Olympic Games in 1968 and 1992. However, there were news reports in both Olympics that focused more on reproducing the female participant's appearance rather than their athletic performance. The results also show that there are only slight differences in each newspapers framing of female athletics in the Olympic Games in Mexico City 1968. The most usual descriptions based on my results are that female athletics are beautiful, girls and small. The result of this paper shows that is possible to perceive a change of the most common descriptions in the Olympics Games in Barcelona 1992. In the Olympics 1992 framing as doped and civil state began to more usual in the news that was about female athletics.

Equestrian sport has been present on the Modern Olympic programme since 1900 with Para-Equestrian Dressage making its debut at the 1996 Paralympic Games. Due to the combined governance of Olympic and Paralympic versions of the sport, the mixed gender of competition and the potential age range of competitors, equestrian sport provides an opportunity through which to understand a unique context of athlete experience. This thesis has sought to identify and evaluate athlete experience within the context of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and to place this experience within the wider career histories of members of the British Equestrian Team. This study utilised a combination of a systematic literature review methodology and ethnographic data collection and analysis with a critical realist approach, creating a framework that values interpretive insights into how the subjects perceive and construct their world whilst at the same time considering ways in which the literature and individual subjects identify, comment on, and frame the reality of the world of equestrian sport. This study has resulted in the emergence of six themes pertaining to experiencing the games; equestrian sporting culture, identity, values, challenges, performance support and success. Results show many similarities and shared experiences for both the Olympic and Paralympic equestrian athletes. The differences regarding the lived experience for these athletes are predominantly associated with the development of the sport, the relative short Paralympic history of equestrian sport in comparison to the Olympic disciplines, and the place of the Games in the context of the riders career histories. Recognising and understanding the kinds of satisfactions and challenges that individuals experience, the significant features of their athlete identity, and the structural constraints and opportunities of their environment may help identify and design the services and provision required to support the athletes through this elite sporting experience.

In my thesis I will focus on all the successes of Czech and Czechoslovak athletes at the Olympics in the javelin. I also want to briefly describe the history and development of this discipline. Furthermore, I will also describe modern technology of javelin and physiological description. Nevertheless, the main part will be about our Olympic heroes in this technically very demanding discipline. In this part, there will be mainly detailed course of the race at the Olympics, where they have had any success. My thesis will also include a biography of these prominent Athletes.

O esporte contemporâneo tem nos Jogos Olímpicos o seu maior evento e sua evolução na Era Moderna aconteceu quase que completamente durante o Século XX. Os boicotes às edições dos Jogos Olímpicos são manifestações que exemplificam as relações políticas presentes no esporte e seu estudo é bastante esclarecedor. O maior boicote ocorrido foi proposto pelos Estados Unidos em 1980, aos Jogos realizados na extinta União Soviética. Na ocasião houve grande redução no número de participantes e um abalo nas estruturas do Movimento Olímpico. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o contexto político do boicote aos Jogos de Moscou, sobretudo no que diz respeito ao posicionamento do Brasil. Para a realização do estudo foi selecionado um dos principais jornais brasileiros (Folha de São Paulo) e dele se retirou os dados que vão o desde a segunda quinzena do mês de dezembro de 1979, com a ocupação soviética do Afeganistão (23/12/1979), até a primeira quinzena do mês de agosto de 1980, encerramento dos Jogos Olímpicos de Moscou (03/08/1980). Embora o Brasil desenvolvesse uma posição de alinhamento à política norte-americana na Guerra Fria, optou por não aderir ao boicote comercial, nem ao olímpico enviando uma grande delegação a Moscou. O governo militar brasileiro agiu de maneira pragmática preferindo lucrar com a ausência de norte-americanos e europeus tanto no campo comercial quanto esportivo / The Olympic Games is the biggest event in contemporary sports and the 20th century was the stage where most of the evolution of the Olympic Games of The Modern Age happened. The boycotts to the Olympic Games are manifestations that exemplify the relationship between sport and politics and studying it brings light to the subject. To this day, the biggest boycott was the one that the United States promoted against the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympic Games. In that occurrence there were a significant reduction in the number of participants as well as a profound impact to the Olympic Movement structures. The purpose of these research is to analyse the politic context of the Moscow`s Olympic Boycott, with special attention for the brazilian position. The research was made in one of the most important brazilian newspapers (Folha de São Paulo), in the final editions of 1979, period of the sovietic occupation on Afghanistan, until august of 1980, period of the end of Moscow Olympic Games. In spite of the pressure from the United States, Brazil decided not to join the boycott, exposing an internal movement that the country was going through, which was a period of delicate economical issues, and the country was not capable of deny the economical advantages of relation with Soviet Union