Media and representation of others. Case of Iran in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Abstract

Nowadays, the media plays a key part in representing nations in mega-sporting events. In this study, we aimed to examine how Western English-language news sources represented Iran, as an Eastern and Islamic country, in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. To accomplish this, data were collected using LexisNexis Academic, Google Search, and Google News tools. We utilised topic modelling, a text summarisation technique for data analysis. The analysis generated seven main topics: ‘Kimia Alizadeh & Refugee Athlete’; ‘Saeid Mollaei & Israel’; ‘Iranian Athletes & Home-Abroad’; ‘Javad Foroughi & Win, Nurse’; ‘Navid Afkari & IOC’; ‘Russia, China, Iran & Media Representation’; ‘Iran, Men & Medal-Winning’. Our analysis indicated the occurrence of Othering around Iran in the narratives of Western (in particular American-based) news articles in the 2020 Olympics. This means that these articles predominantly focused on Iranian refugee athletes and often discussed Iran and Iranian athletes in the 2020 Olympics using political language and negative associations.

Keywords:

• Elite sports
• media representation
• self-other binary
• Olympics
• Iran

Introduction

In media analysis, the connection between framing and the construction of reality is evident. Gamson (1989) defines framing in news as the process of highlighting certain aspects of an issue while downplaying or ignoring others, thereby shaping how the audiences perceive and understand a specific topic. Fowler (2013) extends this by emphasising that real events transform into mediated news messages when they are selected, while many other (relevant) events are not mentioned. The media selectively determines which events and stories to report to the audiences (Luhmann & Cross, 2000). This selection is influenced by editorial decisions, audience preferences, and societal expectations, resulting in a subjective representation of reality (Luhmann & Cross, 2000). This selective process, as pointed out by Herman and Chomsky (2010) is not a neutral attempt. Despite being labelled as ‘independent’ and ‘free’, mass media often tend to favour political and economic elites in their news production. This aligns with the idea that media outlets construct an idealised version of reality by adhering to their own internal rules and codes (Luhmann & Cross, 2000). Consequently, news outlets contribute to the social construction of reality by establishing cognitive networks through the selection and highlighting of relevant thoughts, feelings, and concepts (Fürsich, 2010; Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2004).

According to Bourdieu (1998), the reality in the sporting world comprises of two aspects. He introduces the concept of ‘double production’ to describe the relationship between the Olympic Games, television broadcasting, and news media. Bourdieu argues that the Olympic Games are produced twice: first; in the stadium that showcases organisers of the event, athletes, coaches, medal achievements, and nationalistic rituals; second, in the television broadcasting and news media that frame narratives around athletes and competitions. In this respect, he underscores the contribution of political, economic, and cultural forces to the framing and media representation of the first aspect in the Games (Bourdieu, 1998; Lee Ludvigsen & Petersen-Wagner, 2023).

Representation is therefore a key axis in media productions. It is challenging for media producers to represent all aspects of a story to their audiences (Kidd, 2016). Expanding on this notion, Hall (1997) introduced the idea that the process of representation involves encoding and decoding. Encoding refers to how messages are constructed by media producers, while decoding involves how audiences interpret and make sense of those messages, and this can be influenced by specific cultural codes as well. Hall’s assertion that meanings are not fixed allows for multiple interpretations of a representation. This way, representation and interpretation of cultures can result in Othering by creating distinctions between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ (ibid.).

In this regard, news media are not purely objective as they try to produce and reproduce the ideologies of hegemonic groups (Shaban Abdullah Hussein, 2017). This is what Van Dijk (2000) posits as a positive representation of Us (the in-group) and a negative representation of Them (the out-group), aiming to develop and promote the ideologies of the in-group. He has, accordingly, argued that news media act based on four principles to express the dominant ideological discourses. They ‘emphasize positive things about Us, emphasize negative things about Them, de-emphasize negative things about Us, and de-emphasize positive things about Them’ (Van Dijk, 2000, p. 44). This process can develop the concept of Othering or Otherness in different areas (e.g. race, gender, nationality, etc.). Othering is about the construction of identities through difference which can create in-groups and out-groups based on the identified characteristics (Glynn & Brown, 2022). In their research work, Krumer-Nevo and Sidi (2012) defined Othering as ‘the risk of portraying the other essentially different, and translating this difference into inferiority’ (p. 299). Therefore, the content of cultural products such as news articles can be imbued with alienating stereotypes over groups who are perceived as Others, resulting in social distance (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi, 2012; Markina, 2019). However, Othering is not a negative concept per se, but it takes on negative connotations when one group is seen as superior and the other as inferior (La Voi et al., 2007), and therefore cause (negative) ‘stereotyping’, ‘prejudice’, and ‘discrimination’ (Çelik et al., 2017). In this respect, Othering takes place when one group aims to exclude, marginalise, or oppress another group through various manners such as using media products (e.g. news articles, images, etc.) (La Voi et al., 2007).

According to Frantz Fanon, Othering can occur as a result of a lack of respect for cultural differences and the overlooking of the priority of ‘human dignity’ over race, gender, class, and national identity, which is rooted in the colonial era (Frantz Fanon, 1967; Nayar, 2011). Furthermore, Western scholars have faced criticism for examining non-Western cultures and the colonised Others through their own perspective and in accordance with Western concepts and values, thereby downplaying alternative discourses from the Third World countries and often representing them negatively (Fúnez-Flores, 2023; Mignolo, 1993). Likewise, but in a more specific and perhaps essentialist way, Said (1979) argued that within Western (media) discourses ‘Orientals’ (West/East Asians and North Africans) are described in different contexts (e.g. delinquents, the insane, women, and the poor) and are seen as outsiders or problems that need to be solved by the West. Said’s argument suggests that Orientalism, characterised as a ‘style of thought’, involves the creation of narratives by the Western world (Haldrup & Koefoed, 2020). These narratives aim to depict the Orient, including the East and Islam, as a threatening and inferior Other (Haldrup & Koefoed, 2020). The present study is, accordingly, going to address the concept of Othering in relation to representation of Iran, an Eastern and Islamic country, by Western news articles during the 2020 Olympic Games.

Media and self-other representation

The interest to study the nexus between sport and media is growing among scholars worldwide (see: e.g. Longas Luque & van Sterkenburg, 2022; Dumitriu, 2018; Razack & Joseph, 2021; MacIntosh et al., 2017). Previous scientific studies have broadly discovered media representation of national teams and athletes in different sporting tournaments by giving meaning to the concept of ‘we’. For instance, Ziaee et al. (2022) studied the representation of Iran’s national football team in the 2018 FIFA and 2019 AFC Asian cups. They identified four main themes (‘united passion’, ‘determined and conscientious’, ‘oppressed but great’, and ‘emotion-ridden’) around the construction of Iranian national identity under the performance of their national football team (ibid.). As another example, Vincent et al. (2010) examined the construction of English national identity during the 2006 football World Cup in Germany. Using the ‘us-them’ binary, the English newspapers (The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, and The Sun) placed the narratives about England’s national football team within the socio-historical context of the Second World War, trying to create an emotional connection with English national identity. Further, the narratives, produced by selected English newspapers reminded the audiences of the mythical and imperialistic eras of the country. The theme ‘patriots at play’ was identified as the most frequent theme in the newspapers’ narratives. English players were also discussed in the context of traditional England regardless of the existing heterogeneity in the modern society of England (ibid.). In another study, Kotnik (2007) focused on the representation of Slovenian athletes in Alpine skiing. By referring to a famous mountain in Slovenia (Triglav), the cultural and geographical stability of the country was symbolised. The Slovenian TV broadcasts, accordingly, represented Slovenia as a ‘young, little, and independent’ country (ibid.).

Apart from self-representation, media also play an important role in the representation of other nations. This is also due, in part, to the cultural domination of Westerners over third-world nations in Western (in particular, American) news (Vanderbush, 1996).

Previous studies have considered the representation of Others in different areas. Osborne et al. (2016), for instance, aimed to investigate the representation of India in the 2010 Commonwealth Games by Western and, in particular, the Australian news. They found ‘threat’ as the main theme in those media narratives. This theme was classified into personal (e.g. terrorism, filth, and illness) and institutional (e.g. the status of the Games and the Games being held in a developing nation). The latter, the Games being held in India as a developing country, was discussed as a threat to the hegemonic status of the West (ibid.). In another research work, Shaban Abdullah Hussein (2017) studied Self-Other representations of Western media (e.g. The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post). He concluded that the Self (the dominant group) is represented positively while the Others (e.g. Arabs) are represented negatively in those news media (ibid.). In her thesis, Bora (2015) examined the representation of Turkey in British media sources (e.g. The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and The Times) considering the Self-Other concept, and concluded that Turkey is represented as an agreeable, and useful, yet inferior Self in comparison to EU countries in those media outlets. The media, further, reflected Turkey as a Model Other for Islamic countries. In this regard, Turkey, as a Model Other, is defined as a Western ideal for the regional countries but still inferior to (the Western) Self (ibid.). In their research, Turan et al. (2009) studied the representation of Turkey by Western-originated news in South Korea. They concluded that, unlike Korean news, Western-originated Korean news plays a key role in shaping Koreans’ perceptions of Turkey in a negative way (ibid.). Scholarly work by Allain (2016) examined the representation of Alexander Ovechkin, a Russian hockey player, in two Canadian newspapers, presuming that there is a connection between ice hockey and Canadian national identity (white and dominating) which might be challenged by representations of other hockey nations. He concluded that most of the meanings, given to the Russian player, are associated with political arguments and the language of the Cold War. In particular, the Canadian media represented Alexander Ovechkin as a dirty, wild, and out-of-control player (ibid.). By comparing the Arabic and English news sources on the Syrian refugee crisis, Ramasubramanian and Miles (2018) found that the English and Arabic media had different understandings of this crisis. The English media described the Syrian refugees using words and phrases such as ‘helpless’, ‘passive’, ‘victims’, and ‘in need of saving’, while the Arabic news articles asked to confront the dominant and foreign forces in the region, adopting an emotional approach (ibid.). In another research work, Van Lienden and Van Sterkenburg (2022) discovered that Polish football commentators contribute to creating Othering within the social group of white football players in Polish televised football. As an illustration, they found that Polish football commentators are inclined to position white Polish players positively in their narratives, while introducing white South-European players as players with strong emotions, passion, and anger, outside the dominant understanding of whiteness (ibid.).

As we can see, there are differences between self-representation and representation by others. Being considered as in-group or out-group often determines the nature of the produced narratives by the media sources. In an earlier study, we found how the Iranian media represented their nation during major sporting events. Most notably, self-representation narratives centred on the performance of Iran’s national football team (Ziaee et al., 2022). In the current research work, we will reverse the perspective and examine the representation of Iran through the lens of Western online news agencies in the 2020 Olympic Games, a popular mega-sporting event across the globe. In other words, we intend to understand how Western online news articles contribute to creating particular meanings for Iran in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Method

The main focus of this research was to examine the representation of Iran in the 2020 Olympics. To this end, we chose the English-language Western online news articles that discussed Iran during these Games. In this study, English-language news sources refer to agencies based in or affiliated with Western countries. Data were collected using Google search, Google News (the world’s largest online news aggregator), and LexisNexis Academic search platforms. We focused on online sources because of their accessibility and the wider range of information that they could provide for their audience. Further, most of the selected news agencies (e.g., nytimes, dailymail, theguardian, foxnews, thesun, washingtonpost, mirror, etc.) were presumed to be among the top 50 English-language news brands in the world, indicating that audiences are interested in obtaining information from these sources (Majid, 2023).

To describe our search strategy, the search string ‘Iran* and Tokyo 2020 Olympics’ was used to collect the data. The ‘*’ is a wildcard character for considering different variations of the word Iran such as Iranian, Iranians, Iranians’, Iran’s. We then set a search date from one week before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (16th of July 2021) until one week after the Games (15th of August 2021) across the abovementioned search platforms. We could reach most of the relevant data within this time frame (the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games was postponed for one year due to the Covid-19 pandemic). We retrieved 275 English-language online news articles as a result of our search, and then excluded duplicated pages, Eastern-based sources, non-accessible pages, and match-outcome-oriented news (i.e. those articles that only reported on the results of the matches). As a result, we analysed 52 online news articles from 45 different news agencies and websites, primarily focusing on examining the representation of Iran in Western English-language news sources (mainly US and UK-based) during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (see Appendix 1, Supplemental Materials).

We collected the textual data from the outputs of Google Search and Google News using a browser extension, called Keywords Everywhere. Using this extension, the collected data were polished up by removing pictures and irrelevant/non-textual elements (e.g. emojis, HTML tags, advertisements). The main advantage of using Keywords Everywhere for this study was to save time in scraping the textual data.

After implementing cleansing operations on the textual data (stemming, lemmatising, and removing stop words), we employed topic modelling to extract topics from the data. Topic modelling, a set of machine learning algorithms, aims to discover main topics (themes) amongst a number of documents (Blei, 2012). It is a text summarisation technique, used to uncover the latent thematic structure within a corpus of documents by uncovering recurring clusters of co-occurring words (Diesner et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2016; Törnberg & Törnberg, 2016), where each topic is an unlabelled textual code (Diesner et al., 2013; 2014) that appears with a list of themes. Further, topic modelling facilitates understanding the relationships between different documents that are revolving around a similar issue (Lesnikowski et al., 2019). A common topic modelling approach is called latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) through which several topics can be extracted from a collection of documents (Blei, 2012). LDA considers each document as a mixture of topics, and each topic comprises a distribution of words (Blei et al., 2003).

To capture what number of topics better represents our dataset, we determined the optimal number of topics to employ using several coherence-related approaches-proposed by Deveaud et al. (2014), Griffiths and Steyvers (2019) and Jones (2019)- that test different topic numbers. Through these diagnostics, we settled on an optimal number of seven topics; a higher number of topics would be too granular while a lower number would result in coarser, less coherent topics. We refer the reader to Appendix 2 in Supplemental Materials for more details on this selection. Next, we examined the top words for each topic. This includes close readings of how these words are mentioned or discussed in all the source documents with which each topic was most affiliated, in order to better understand the topics and how they were represented through the top words. Through this process, we were able to appropriately label and summarise, and finally discuss each topic more in-depth.

Results

We measured the representation of Iran in the 2020 Olympics by analysing the Western online news articles. Using topic modelling, we identified seven topics for the collected data. Table 1 shows these topics with their affiliated keywords.

Table 1. Topic modelling for the online news articles.

#	Topics	Keywords	Weight
1	Kimia Alizadeh & Refugee Athlete	Alizadeh-Iran-Olympic-refugee-Iranian-team-medal-Tokyo-taekwondo-athlete	0.186
2	Saeid Mollaei & Israel	Israel-judo-medal-Israeli(opponent)-Mollaei-Iranian-Iran-Tokyo-world-Mongolia	0.145
3	Iranian Athletes & Home-Abroad	Iran-compete-athlete-Iranian-Olympics-sport-match-country-coach-team	0.118
4	Javad Foroughi & Win, Nurse	nurse-Iran-Foroughi-win-Javad-gold-hospital-Olympic-call-celebrate	0.071
5	Navid Afkari & IOC	Navid-Iranian-athlete-Iran-Foroughi-IOC-Olympic-Olympics-member-committee	0.061
6	Russia, China, Iran & Media Representation	media-point-Russian-continue-podium-Stanek-federation-back-flag-reach	0.060
7	Iran, Men & Medal-Winning	medal-win-gold-men-Iran-game-Ganjzadeh-wrestle-bronze-final	0.049

As a feature of LDA, a keyword may appear in more than one topic. This would indicate topics that thematically overlap. For example, the keyword ‘Foroughi’ in topic number four is repeated in topic number five Topics/words that overlap in this manner can be more easily observed through a network visualisation (Appendix 3, Supplemental Materials).

The first identified topic concerns the departure of Kimia Alizadeh from Iran and her participation in the 2020 Olympics under the flag of the IOC refugee team. The second topic focuses on Saeid Mollaei leaving Iran and his competition against an Israeli athlete. The third topic revolves around Iranian refugee athletes and the challenges they face after choosing not to represent Iran in international competitions. The fourth topic discusses Javad Foroughi’s achievement in the 2020 Olympics and the narratives surrounding him, as he served as a nurse in Syria’s civil war. The fifth topic is about news articles that highlighted Navid Afkari’s case during the 2020 Olympics. Notably, Afkari was executed in Iran for killing a security officer during the 2019 political unrest in the country. The sixth topic delves into the media representation of Iran, which sometimes associates the country with China and Russia during the Games. Lastly, the seventh topic mainly concerns the performance of Iranian athletes during the 2020 Olympics.

These topics offer insights into the complexities surrounding the media representation of Iran and Iranian athletes in major international sporting tournaments. Accordingly, we will discuss each of these topics (themes) in the following sections.

Kimia Alizadeh & refugee athlete

The first theme that emerged from our analysis was related to the Western media coverage of the departure of some elite Iranian athletes from Iran in recent years. For instance, we found a significant amount of news coverage about Kimia Alizadeh, the first Iranian female athlete who could win an Olympic medal. Alizadeh departed Iran for Europe in 2019, citing that the Iranian government used her achievement in the 2016 Olympics to promote the Islamic hijab in Iran (Ziaee et al., 2022). After this departure, during the 2020 Olympics, she participated under the International Olympic Committee’s refugee team.

The Western news agencies, among other things, placed a great emphasis on her departure in their coverage of Iran in the 2020 Games. For example, Infomigrants (2021), a European-affiliated news agency, appreciated her participation as a stateless athlete: ‘Alizadeh wanted to prove to her many critics that her achievements have nothing to do with a passport. That she is as good of a fighter as a stateless person as she was as an Iranian. That she deserves respect as an athlete, as a woman, and as a human being.’ Further, after Alizadeh finished her competitions in the Games, an American-based news agency, Axios (2021), appreciated her performance although she could not earn a medal: ‘Kimia Alizadeh narrowly missed winning the Refugee Olympic Team’s first Games medal, in the bronze match.’ At the same time, her political statement against the Iranian state and her departure for Germany was constantly covered during the 2020 Olympics. Given this, the International Olympics Committee (IOC, 2021) wrote on its website, ‘… Alizadeh achieved something that looked improbable ahead of the tournament’ and continued that ‘the refugee athlete, who fled the country of her birth, described herself as ‘one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran’ (ibid.). This way, the selected news agencies and websites tried to draw attention to the political aspect of this departure when discussing Alizadeh and her affiliation to Iran, rather than focusing on her performance in the Games.

Regarding the media representation of refugee athletes by the IOC, Burdsey et al. (2022) reported that the refugee athletes are represented under four main themes at the 2020 Olympic Games: Western sports and the Olympics as possessing transformative power through which the refugee athletes can adapt for the new living conditions; refugee athletes as role models for other refugees; the neoliberal ideology that everything is achievable with hard work and personal responsibility; and the refugee Olympic team as an example of inclusivity and benevolence in the Global North. In their study, Burdsey et al. (2022) critiqued the media constructions of international organisations such as the IOC because of overstating the abovementioned themes and the role of the IOC in supporting refugee athletes. This is in line with arguments advanced by Turcott and Ariyo (2022). They analysed the frames of international news media about the refugee Olympics team at the 2016 Rio and the 2020 Tokyo summer games and found a hyper-positive representation of the Olympics for moderating the refugee crisis in the context of global North-South relations. It was, further, argued that the way that news is covered in the media plays an important part in shaping the public understanding of the story of refugee athletes (ibid.). To examine the role of news media in shaping public perceptions, for example, also Mauro (2020) argued that ‘Othering’ is developed by giving impetus to concepts such as the ‘refugee athlete’, the ‘son of immigrants’, and the ‘black player’ in the context of international sporting competitions.

Saeid Mollaei & Israel

Iranian athletes have either refused or have been forced to refuse to compete against Israelis or in Israel (Chehabi, 2001; Samuel-Azran et al., 2018). To understand why they do not engage with Israelis, in the first place, we have to go back to the nineteenth century. In summary, the British Mandate of Palestine was divided into Arab and Jewish states in 1947, resulting in the creation of the state of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war (Global Conflict Tracker, 2022). In effect, the violence against Palestinians has increased since 1967 (ibid.). For example, in one of its recent reports, the Special Committee of the United Nations warned about the severe violation of human rights by Israeli forces against Palestinian civil society (The United Nations, 2022). In addition to the Iranian athletes, several Arab athletes have also declined to compete against Israeli athletes. For instance, one Algerian and a Sudanese judoka both withdrew from their matches against Israeli opponents during the 2020 Olympics (Al-Monitor, 2021; Insider, 2021). Similarly, a Jordanian Taekwondo competitor refused to play with an athlete from Israel in the 2022 World Taekwondo competitions (Uklfi, 2022). The experiences of Saudi badminton team players, one Yemeni judoka, one Kuwaiti Taekwondo player, and one Libyan judo champion are other examples of this refusal (Alestiklal, 2022). Further, in his study, Dart (2017) concluded that, like many other (Arab) nations, Palestinians may also use sport as a form of soft power to assert their rights in a context that violates those rights.

In relation to our case in the present study, it is important to note that the Iranian state does not recognise Israel as a state as part of its foreign policy principles (Tasnim, 2017). Hence, the refusal of Iranian athletes to compete against Israelis seems to fall under this principle (ibid.). However, there have been instances where Iranian athletes have disregarded this principle. As an example, Saeid Mollaei who avoided fighting the Israeli opponent, in the 2019 World Championships in Japan, refused to return to his homeland claiming that he was ordered to lose in the semi-final to avoid facing an Israeli opponent in the final stage (see: e.g. ABC News, 2021). The story of Mollaei garnered significant media attention during the 2020 Olympics. For instance, the American news agency, nytimes (2021), reflected Mollaei’s argument: ‘I am a fighter; I want to compete wherever I can. I live in a country whose law does not permit me to.’ Given this, the International Judo Federation (IJF), referring to its anti-discrimination policy suspended Iran’s national team from international competitions for four years (ibid.). Mollaei, who had refused to return to Iran, was later granted asylum by Germany in 2019. Shortly after winning his first-ever medal in the 2020 Olympics under the flag of Mongolia, he was interviewed by an Israeli sports channel, during which he expressed his respect for Israel and its athletes: ‘Thank you to Israel for the good energy. This medal is dedicated also to Israel’ (see: e.g. Daily Mail, 2021b). The coverage of Mollaei in this manner, which was featured in many Western media sources (e.g. France 24, Fox News, Iran Wire, Times of Israel, Independent, and the Daily Mail), portrayed the perspective of an individual (refugee) Iranian athlete, in contrast to that of the Iranian state. However, such Western coverage seems to reinforce a perception of the Iranian state as politically intervening in sports contests, while it does not address the wider rationale of such interventions: a symbolic protest against the perceived violations of Palestinian rights by Israeli forces in the occupied territories. This is an example of how the global media can selectively amplify certain narratives (Montgomery, 2007), which can contribute to a skewed understanding of complex political issues.

Iranian athletes & home-abroad

The IOC Refugee Team participated in the 2020 Olympics with 29 athletes of which five were originally from Iran (Rescue, 2021). This brings us to the third topic: ‘Iranian Athletes & Home-Abroad.’

The stories of Kimia Alizadeh and Saeid Mollaei, among others, were at the centre of the media attention as both athletes refused to comply with the principles of the Iranian state. Alizadeh claimed that the state had used her achievement in the 2016 Olympics to promote the hijab, and Mollaei refused to adhere to the state’s policy of boycotting Israel. As a result, both athletes defected from their homeland and moved abroad. Interestingly, Alizadeh faced Iranian athlete Nahid Kiani in the Taekwondo competitions of the Olympics. While Alizadeh was a member of the refugee team, Kiani represented the Iranian national team. This match-up was, in a sense, surprising if we note that Alizadeh had not been qualified for the 2020 Games. She was rather selected only based on her previous sporting performance: ‘The extra entry made an odd-numbered line-up, requiring a qualifying round to advance to the main bracket. The draw landed Alizadeh against an opponent from her former country’ (AP News, 2021, July 22). This remarkable contest was covered in some of the news articles. For instance, Time (2021) wrote that ‘one hopeful world champion is faced with the harsh reality of competing against a friend and former team-mate from back home.’ The newspaper article also referred to Kkankani, an Iranian professional international showjumper, who expressed this confrontation as ‘a youthful remorse’. ‘It’s truly sad to see them against one another at a time when they could both shine for their own land (ibid.).’ The US-funded news agency, Rferl (2021) cited the Iranian states’ broadcaster when it referred to Alizadeh as ‘she’ or ‘the rival’, rather than mentioning her by name, and criticised the Iranian national media because of calling Alizadeh’s defection an act of ‘betrayal’ towards her native country. Such examples of media coverage, in which nations label their athletes as ‘traitor’ when they shift nationality, are not limited to the Iranian-based sources, though. For instance, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star player Becky Hammon was called a ‘traitor’ by the US media when she chose Russia over the US in the 2008 Olympics (The Atlantic, 2016). In the same way, most recently, the US media commentators called the Chinese-American athlete Gu Ailing a ‘traitor’ because she chose to represent China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, although she did not make any statement against the US or the US government. They reasoned, however, that ‘Gu was born and brought up in the US, and trained there as a freestyle skier’ (Chinadaily, 2022). Still, western-based media sources dismissed this way of coverage as peculiar when it came to Iran.

The emphasis in Western media coverage on Iran’s dismissal of ‘Iranian’ athletes who switch nationality also became evident in the case of Saeid Mollaei, another Iranian athlete who had defected from his homeland. In the Guardian, Mollaei was quoted saying ‘… I live in a country whose law does not permit me to. We have no choice; all athletes must comply with it. All I did today was for my life, for a new life’ (The Guardian, 2019). The Daily Mail (2021) then cited the President of the Iranian Judo Federation, Arash Miresmaeili when he stated – referring to Mollaei’s words- that ‘this is not an honour but a stain of shame on your forehead that will stay with you forever, because you have turned your back… on your homeland, and are proud of it’ (ibid.). It seems that Western articles tend to place strong emphasis on Iranian refugee athletes when their departure from their homeland is because of political reasons. For the Iranian sport’s caravan, the 2020 Olympics provided the Western media, more than other things, a platform for covering the story of Iranian refugee athletes and zooming in on their comments related to their defection from Iran. Similarly, Michelini (2021) studied the representation of Yusra Mardini as a refugee athlete in the 2016 Olympics and concluded that the German newspapers preferred to represent Mardini as a hero, emphasising her life story, rather than focusing on her performance. Referring to the refugee crisis in Syria, also Ramasubramanian and Miles (2018) found that there are differences between representations of Syrian refugee athletes in Arabic and English news sources. Contrary to the Arabic news, Western English news sources represented the Syrian refugees as victims and subsequently the Western host countries as saviours and in control of global politics and culture (ibid.). At the same time, this contrasts with findings by Turcott and Ariyo (2022) who reported that media coverage of refugee Olympic teams is largely focused on their performance in sports rather than the difficult periods that they have gone through.

Javad Foroughi & win, nurse

Javad Foroughi who won a gold medal for Iran in the men’s 10-meter air pistol competition in the 2020 Olympics, captured considerable attention in the Western news coverage of Iran. Foroughi, as a frontline nurse, served the wounded soldiers on the battlefield during the Civil War in Syria as well as the infected people in the hospital in Iran during the Corona pandemic. Thanks to his achievement in the 2020 Olympics, the CEO of the International Council of Nurses (2021) said that ‘on behalf of the entire ICN family we would like to send our best wishes to Javad for his exceptional achievement… Javad has inspired us all, not only for his sharp shooting but also because he has used his Olympic gold medal podium to express a very clear and important public health message at this critical moment in the COVID-19 pandemic.’

Despite receiving words of praise for his gold medal win in the men’s 10-meter air pistol competition at the 2020 Olympics, Javad Foroughi was portrayed in some Western news articles as a nurse, affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military organisation in Iran. Based on this affiliation, some Western news sources (e.g. The Guardian, Insidethegames) wrote that he should return his medal, earned in the Olympics. For example, Fox News (2021) published a statement, announcing that Foroughi’s win was ‘not only a catastrophe for Iranian sports but also for the international community, especially the reputation of the IOC.’ Further, the news agency Jerusalem Post drew on what Iran’s oppositional groups said about Javad Foroughi. They associated him with terms like ‘terrorist organisation’, ‘a history of violence’, ‘suspension of any medal award’, and ‘political soldiers of the Nazi Party of Hitler’ (Jpost, 2021). After Foroughi’s win, also Jin Jong-oh, a six-time Olympic medallist shooter who failed in this competition asserted, in an interview, that ‘how can a terrorist win the first place? That’s the most ridiculous thing’ (The Guardian, 2021). This was, perhaps, influenced by the Western coverage of Foroughi because shortly after such an argument, Jin expressed his apology: ‘I was not careful enough to check out the facts over some reports (on Foroughi), and I should also have been more considerate’ (The Korean Times, 2021).

It is important to note that Javad Foroughi was not the only Olympic medallist who had a record of serving in the military or cooperating with military organisations. Several other athletes, often referred to as ‘soldier-athletes,’ have also participated in the Olympic Games thus far. These include Naomi Graham, Nickolaus Mowrer, Sandra Uptagrafft, Amro Egleziry, Ildar Hafizov, and Samantha Schultz, among others (AFBA, 2021). However, the attention and tone of the selected news articles on Foroughi’s military background seem to be uniquely focused on him, perhaps due to the political tensions between Iran and certain states from Global North, particularly the United States.

The protest against Javad Foroughi’s medal-winning in the Olympics was also accompanied by the ‘United for Navid’ campaign, leading us to the fifth topic of this study.

Navid Afkari & IOC

The ‘United for Navid’ campaign was created in reference to Navid Afkari, an Iranian wrestler who was sentenced to death for killing an intelligence agent during the 2019 nationwide unrest in Iran (Fars News, 2022). While Afkari’s case garnered international attention and criticism, it is important to note that he was not the only athlete in the world to be arrested for murder. For example, the famous Indian wrestler, Sushil Kumar who won an Olympic gold medal was also charged with killing a young athlete in New Delhi (Indian Express, 2022). Likewise, the former NBA Star Jayson Williams was accused of manslaughter in New Jersey, USA (History, 2002). Henry Ruggs and Aaron Hernandez (American footballers), and Carlos Monzón (Argentine professional boxer) are other examples of athletes who participated in the Olympics and later committed a similar crime (Ranker, 2021). Nevertheless, the produced narratives by the Western news agencies around Iran in the 2020 Olympics were often imbued with political narratives. For example, during the Olympics, under the pretext of ‘United for Navid’ campaign, it was published that the world -in particular the IOC and other international sports federations- should consider isolating the Iranian state (Fox News, 2021) which also implied the exclusion of Iranian athletes from international sporting competitions. In a similar vein, after Javad Foroughi’s win in these Games, Asia News (2021), the Italian-based news agency wrote that while Iran ‘pays homage to the winner, there is no lack of criticism and attacks from pro-human rights groups, at home and abroad.’

Overall, it appeared that Western-affiliated news articles often tend to place a particular focus on the judicial handling of such crimes in the Iranian context. This is, in a sense, consistent with the work of Fayyaz and Shirazi (2013) who analysed two decades of portrayal of Iran in two popular American newspapers, Newsweek and Time. Considering political, social, and cultural elements, they explained how these news articles tend to categorise Iranians into two groups: ‘good Iranians’ (those who align with the interests of the US) and ‘bad Iranians’ (those who do not align with the interests of the US). These media outlets, accordingly, contributed to developing the concept of ‘Self’ and ‘Othering’ through the use of terms such as ‘secular’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘liberal’, and ‘modern’ to represent ‘the Self’, introduced as American ideals (ibid.). Research works have reported ‘Othering’ in media representations, also within the realm of sports. For example, Jung (2019) examined the Western media representation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. He found that these media intended to develop a sense of ‘Otherness’ in their coverage of the host nation and concluded that such media representations try to imply a colonialist logic, effectively illustrating how the West interiorised and produced Orientalist images of Brazil (ibid.). In another study, Mastro et al. (2011) investigated the media representation of athlete-criminals and found that the athlete’s race/ethnicity plays an important role in developing the tone and type of news articles, and therefore contributing to a sense of Otherness in sports. As an illustration, the selected newspapers overrepresented black athletes as criminals compared to white athletes (ibid.).

Russia, China, Iran & media representation

During the 2020 Olympics, some Western news sources focused primarily on highlighting political issues in countries that seemed to have different interests than those of the West, rather than purely focusing on athletes and their performance in the competitions. This suggests a certain level of bias in media coverage, which could contribute to shaping public opinions and perceptions of these countries. In the present study, the selected media sources were inclined to represent Iran and Iranian-affiliated athletes using political language. For instance, some of these sources emphasised the (perceived) strategic cooperation between Iran, Russia, and China, particularly referencing Iran and Russia’s engagement in Syria’s Civil War. For instance, after the win of Javad Foroughi, newsweek (2021) referring to Foroughi’s medal-winning, published that ‘Foroughi deployed… to Syria, where Iran and Russia joined Assad (the president of Syria)… and though Foroughi was reportedly a nurse, he gave a military salute from the podium after his win, as Iran’s national anthem played.’ Further, it was reported that the states of Iran, China, and Russia are using the Olympic Games as a tool to refute the claims of the Western states over issues such as the violation of human rights (Securing Democracy, 2021). It was, for example, published in The Alliance for Securing Democracy, affiliated with the United States, that the Chinese coverage has largely aimed to promote China’s rise and portray confidence in the country’s trajectory (Securing Democracy, 2021). In the same way, ‘Russian state media’s coverage of the Olympics has, allegedly, shown a preference for denigrating Russia’s geopolitical competitors than boosting Russia’s image’ (Securing Democracy, 2021). Likewise, Iran’s ‘boycott Israel’ policy and indicating the solidarity between Iran and its neighbours were mentioned as media representation goals of the Iranian state in the Olympics (ibid.). In the same way, Fox News (2021) indicated the establishment of ‘a human rights sports award for those athletes who are outspoken, for example, in China, Russia, and Iran where there is no democracy.’

Iran, men & medal-winning

After analysing the Western media coverage of Iran in the 2020 Olympics, we found that the topic related to the achievements of Iranian athletes has received the least attention in these media outlets. This lack of coverage contrasts with the significant attention given to other topics, such as the political stories of Iranian refugee athletes.

However, there have been more constructive and positive portrayals of this topic, particularly in relation to Iran’s national basketball and volleyball teams, as opposed to other sports disciplines. For example, prior to the Iran-US match in the men’s basketball competitions, Al-Monitor (2021), a US-based news agency, attempted to bridge between the two countries, despite the lack of formal relations between them: ‘basketball links the two countries in several ways. Iranian centre Hamed Haddadi was the first and only Iranian to play in North America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) … Forward Arsalan Kazemi played top-level college basketball in the US. The Iranian team also has an American forward, Michael Rostampour, on its roster. Born in the northern US state of Minnesota, Rostampour said in January that he is happy to represent his father’s home country (ibid.).’

Conclusion

Referring to the idea of ‘double production’, put forth by Bourdieu (1998), results of the present study show little attention devoted to performance of the Iranian athletes within the narratives of Western news articles in the 2020 Olympics. Instead, the occurrence of ‘Othering’ around Iran in Western-based (mainly American-based) news articles during the Games is strongly evident in narratives that emphasise the political background of Iranian professional male and female athletes. For example, the departure of Kimia Alizadeh and Saeid Mollaei from their homeland, accompanied by their reactions which was against the principles of the Iranian state, as well as the winning of an Olympic gold medal by Javad Foroughi -who was thought to be affiliated with the Iranian military organisation- are frequently highlighted and reported in politicised language by these news outlets. It essentially confirms the argument, advanced by Fowler (2013) that news is a product of the social and political environment. This is particularly obvious when it comes to the cases of those, perceived as ‘athlete-soldiers’, ‘athlete-refugees’, and ‘athlete-murderers’. The selected media sources for this study are seemingly inclined to place a political and controversial emphasis on the Iranian state during the 2020 Olympic Games when discussing and representing Iranian athletes.

This, in a way, shows how media outlets can often operate to reinforce and support hegemonic disocurses and already existing processes of ‘Othering’ through various manners such as the selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues and information, and the emphasis and tone of language (Herman & Chomsky, 2010). The manifestation of this phenomenon can be observed, for instance, in the emphasis placed on negative incidents around Iran within the selected Western news agencies, such as athletes’ departure from the country during the 2020 Olympics. The results of the present study confirm what Van Dijk (2000) argues about how media seem to favour the perceived in-group over those, perceived as the Other; here evident in the media coverage of Iran coming from Western and especially US-based online news agencies.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

To conclude, we like to point to several limitations in our study and some suggestions for future research. Firstly, in this study, we used online search tools (see methods) to collect relevant Western news coverage on Iran or Iranian athletes during the 2020 Olympics. However, this approach may not be sufficient to fully capture how Iran is represented in the Western media. Future research could, therefore, broaden its scope, by additionally including in the sample the most-watched or most-read media outlets in Western countries. Future researchers can also (1) further investigate the impact of politics on the development of ‘Othering’ connotations in major international sporting competitions, particularly considering the occurrence of political arguments during the 2020 Olympics related to Iran; and (2) study the representation of Iranian elite athletes who were reported by the Iranian media to have departed from the country.

Additionally, a more comprehensive and comparative future direction will include a broader yet related set of events, e.g. Olympics 2016 and 2024, as well as non-Western and non-English news sources, in order to observe non-Western forms of ‘Othering’, as well as shifts in these perspectives over time.

Disclosure statement

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