Sochi 2014 Olympics on Twitter: Perspectives of hosts and guests

Abstract

Mega sports events create multiple benefits for the host country but can also bring into focus the political and social problems. This study provides a comprehensive description of the public discourse about Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics on Twitter in two languages, Russian and English. The former represents the perspective of hosts and the latter – that of the guests. The study traces the temporal dynamics of the most salient issues and conducts sentiment analysis of public attitudes. It also examines whether sentiments toward the Games changed as the event unfolded, that is, whether the event succeeded in creating a more positive image of the Games. It was found that while the positive attitudes expressed in the tweets about the Sochi Olympics improved throughout the course of the Games, this improvement was practically significant only for the hosts' segment of the sample, with much smaller improvement in the guests' segment.