The Olympic Games play a crucial role in shaping and promoting the host country’s national image and global perceptions. Nevertheless, limited scholarly attention has been devoted to examining how international media coverage of such events influences the perception of the host country abroad, particularly regarding major sporting events held in China. This study seeks to fill this gap by analyzing 50 China-related pieces of news from leading international publications covering the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Drawing from these selected news articles based on circulation metrics, this study employs a dual-level analytical framework from the perspectives of macro and micro discourses. The research integrates a corpus-assisted methodology with critical discourse analysis to systematically explore features of media headlines. We incorporate both keyword analysis and keyword-in-context approaches (KWIC) to reveal underlying patterns and meanings. Analysis of international media coverage during the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics revealed distinct narrative patterns concerning Chinese diplomatic relations and leadership. The findings indicate that foreign media outlets devoted limited attention to the Olympic events themselves. Instead, they emphasized broader sociopolitical issues, particularly in portraying China as a country that overworks regional ethnic minorities and has human rights problems. In addition, General Secretary Xi’s presidential image emerged as intrinsically linked to China’s national image in international discourse. These insights offer valuable perspectives on China’s diplomatic positioning and suggest implications for future approaches to national image construction through major sporting events.
Hong et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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