Nationalistic Notions of the Superpowers: Comparative Analyses of the American and Chinese Telecasts in the 2008 Beijing Olympiad

Ranging from enhanced media exposure to increased athlete mentions, to biased on-air dialogues, nationalism percolates within the mosaic of the Olympic media framework. This study incorporates the dialogue of 2 national telecasts (United States and China) of 5 sports to determine the degree to which the 2 athletic superpowers framed athletic performances using “us vs. them” dichotomies. Significant differences were uncovered within discourse taxonomical attributions, leading to a conclusion that the telecasts from these two nations described the same athletic performances in substantially different manners which were largely based on whether the athlete competed for the United States or China.