New Report Published on Online Abuse of Olympic Athletes

Recently three of my colleagues at Loughborough University London and I completed a project funded by the International Olympic Committee’s Advanced Research Grant Programme focused on online abuse of Olympic athletes. Our study examined over 200,000 tweets directed at Olympic athletes following ‘trigger events’ during the Olympic Games as well as analysing interview data from 29 international sport stakeholders regarding online abuse of athletes, impacts of this abuse, and safeguarding measures. The full 150-page report that we produced for the IOC can be found here, while a shorter 5-page condensed report is available here. Our hope is that this research will help international sport organisations to develop revised and/or new safeguarding practices that better protect athletes from such abuse.

Guest editing a research topic on “Media and the Olympic Games” in Frontiers in Sports & Active Living

Along with my colleague Dr. Mike Naraine from Brock University in Canada, I will be guest editing a special research topic in the journal Frontiers in Sports & Active Living: Sports Management and Marketing focused on “Media and the Olympic Games“. We realise a lot of Olympic media research will not take place until the Tokyo 2021 Summer Games, Beijing 2022 Winter Games, and/or the Dakar 2022 Youth Olympic Games, but hopefully by announcing the call for papers now, it will give researchers plenty of time to develop their studies to be submitted.

You can view the full call for papers at the link above. Some of the potential topics of interest include:

  • Media-related research focused on the Summer Olympic Games, Winter Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Youth Olympic Games, International Sport Federations, or National Governing Bodies
  • Cross-cultural or multinational comparisons of Olympic media coverage or media consumers
  • Media consumers’ perspectives of Olympic media coverage
  • Olympic journalists’ decision-making processes regarding coverage/reporting choices
  • Olympic athletes as media producers and/or consumers
  • Relationship between governing bodies (e.g., the IOC) and athletes regarding social media use
  • Changing role of the media as athletes have the ability to communicate directly with media consumers
  • Digital media coverage of the Olympic, Paralympic, or Youth Olympic Games
  • Olympic media policies for athletes, coaches, or accredited members of the media

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Mike or me!