Disrupting the global refugee crisis or celebrity humanitarianism? Media frames of the refugee olympic team at 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo summer games

Abstract

The world is witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record. Journalists play an active role shaping the evolution and magnitude of a crisis as well as how they frame refugees in media. The Refugee Olympic Team (EOR) was introduced by IOC President Thomas Bach in October 2015. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the EOR team was referenced in relation to the current global refugee crisis across international news media during the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games. We conducted a content analysis of the EOR team and athletes as they appeared in international news media from October 2015 until August 2021.After removing duplicate articles, the analysis capped at 310 original articles from 23 countries. Three central frames emerged from the international news media to characterize the EOR team and athletes: disrupting the crisis frame, Olympic celebrity humanitarian frame, and flat frame. Thomas Bach and representatives from the IOC and UNHCR were quoted most often in over 50% of all articles. EOR athlete, Yusra Mardini, of Syria, was the most individually covered and quoted athlete. Based off our media analysis, we discuss whether the Olympics public involvement with the global refugee crisis can be viewed as a form of celebrity humanitarianism, which rather than “helping” communities in the global South, can reproduce the same hierarchies and inequalities.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• humanitarianism
• media
• Refugee Olympic Team
• displacement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).