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ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, the Olympic Games has styled itself as an environmental leader, devoting part of its platform to promoting sustainability. Analyzing official Olympic environmental communication reveals a strategy of environmental discourse that is undertheorized in scholarship on environmental communication. Discourse analysis shows Olympic sustainability discourse being punctuated by myth-work: strategic appeals to deeply sedimented myths of humankind’s place in nature. These myths are transmitted as meta-messages bound with the Olympic platform and ethos. The Olympic humanist tenets of virtue and unity dilute and undermine explicit environmental communication, producing a reassuring effect and ensuring the continuation of business as usual.
Acknowledgements
The research for this article was undertaken as part of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant DP200103360. The author wishes to thank Prof Brett Hutchins for his comments on earlier versions of this article, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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