Celebrity Athletes, Soft Power and National Identity: Hong Kong Newspaper Coverage of the Olympic Champions of Beijing 2008 and London 2012

The modern Olympic Games have been regarded as vehicles for governments to use elite athletes to promote soft power agendas and build national cohesion. Adopting textual analysis, the present study examined the global sports events within a specific sociocultural context, by analyzing and comparing the reportage of 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics in four Hong Kong newspapers. All the news articles were probed to discern pervading themes regarding the Olympic champions as celebrities, and three discursive formations were identified: national heroes, rags-to-riches figures, and stars in the entertainment industry. The findings make visible both the instances that nurture the perception of national identity and Hong Kong media's alternative responses to the party-state's propaganda. Although the Olympics can play a positive role in articulating national pride and fostering national identity, the study also shows the complexities of the construction of Chinese nationalism and patriotism in postcolonial Hong Kong.