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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-197732 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Segerdahl, Adam, Elofsson, Filip |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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