Between sports event and media event. The Sochi 2014 olympic winter games in italian newspapers

Since its first edition (1896), modern Olympic Games represented a far-reaching sport event, because they draw the attention of a wide audience and because their “festivity” breaks daily routines. According to Dayan and Katz, Olympic Games are to be considered certainly a sport event, but also a media event, as confirmed by the leading role that they played in the media wide scenario. Then, covering the issue of Olympic Games is of paramount importance for media. Several studies about sports journalism confirm this trend. During the last century, Olympic Games have been one of the main catalyst of newsmaking evolution, and the main factor determining the appeal of sport news to a wider audience. Over the last 40 years, Olympic newsworthiness has covered a wide range of news, often falling outside of agonistic race: Mexico 1968 was also the Plaza de las Tres Culturas’ massacre and the Black Power salute performed by Tommie Smith and John Carlos; Monaco 1972 was the massacre plotted by the Palestinian group Black September; Mosca 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 were the games boycotted by several countries. In the last ten years, especially newspapers enhanced this trend: covering all the news “connected” to sports has become their answer to the excessive power of television and social media as sports voice-over. From this point of view, Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games have confirmed all the mentioned trends: newspapers have talked about agonistic races, but they also have told athletes’ personal stories, not to say about all the news connected to Olympic Games (from the issue of homosexuality in Russia to the Ukraine insurrection that took shape during the Games). This paper analyses the Sochi 2014 media coverage through a qualitative research focused on two Italian significant newspapers: the most diffused Italian newspaper, that is Corriere della Sera, and the most important newspaper dedicated to sport news, that is La Gazzetta dello Sport. The paper aims to understand in which way, today, Olympic Games still represents a sport event and, at the same time, a media event.