In 2010, Qatar became the first Middle Eastern nation to be awarded a FIFA World Cup (FWC). In the years leading up to the 2022 FWC, Media outlets frequently portrayed Qatar as an inhumane and barbaric nation. As such, the objective of this article is to explore and interrogate these tensions by analysing portrayals of Qatar as the host of the 2022 FWC. We pose two research questions: (1) How was Qatar represented in the news media as the 2022 FIFA World Cup host? And (2) How and to what extent do these representations reproduce or contest Orientalist framings of Muslim nations? We addressed these questions by conducting a reflexive thematic analysis of news media articles published by The Guardian , which focused on Qatar before, during, and immediately after the completion of the FWC, and interpreted them through Edward Said's postcolonial framework of Orientalism. Our analysis identified two contested themes in The Guardian coverage of Qatar: (a) migrant worker exploitation and (b) LGBTQ+ and women's rights violations. Within these themes, representations tended to frame Qatar as an unfit World Cup host, casting doubt not just on the nation's preparedness but also on its cultural legitimacy. These depictions contributed to a broader media discourse that marginalized Qatari voices, downplayed national reform efforts, and recycled longstanding Orientalist tropes regarding Islam and the Middle East. We also identified counternarratives that questioned whether such scrutiny would be targeted towards host nations in Western nations. Based on these findings, we argue that the Guardian 's depictions of Qatar reveal a contested framing of the nation where Orientalist discourses are both reproduced and resisted within the news media corpus.
Ali et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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