Dr. Thomas Horky
Professor at the Macromedia University in Germany. He worked as a journalist, at the University of Hamburg, Hamburg Institute of Sports Journalism, and the German Sports University. He was a visiting professor at Indiana University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Email: t.horky@macromedia.de
Bluesky: @thomashorky.bsky.social
Dr. Meistra Budiasa
Assistant Professor at Bung Karno University, Jakarta, Indonesia and Director of the Center for Sport and Communication. Doctoral in Media and Cultural Studies from Gadjah Mada University. His research interest is media sport, sport events, and cultural studies.
Email: meistra@gmail.com
Twitter: @meistra
“Yeeeeees…Gold for Germany!” (ARD commentator Dirk Froberg, August 5th, 2024). For the German triathlete Laura Lindemann, crossing the finish line was probably a cumulation of exhaustion, joy, but perhaps also thoughts of finances and a ‘we showed them’. The victory of an outsider team in the mixed relay competition, a sport that is hardly noticed in its own country on TV screens and in other media.
“Of course, I felt pressure, I wanted to bring it home,” said the 28-year-old Lindemann afterwards on German television (ARD), “but of course it was fun somewhere too. I knew: OK, this can be something big.” National coach Thomas Moeller explained, “we’ve had very difficult years with insignificance in competitive sport… that’s another reason why we as triathlon Germany are super happy”.
For many athletes, the ultimate goal is to take part in the Olympic or Paralympic Games at least once. The importance of this can vary for each athlete in different disciplines and countries. The focus is on the big, attention-grabbing sports such as athletics, swimming or, increasingly, Olympic football. Here, it’s all about medals, media and lots of money. But what about the smaller sports and athletes from countries that have little chance of success? The individual goals and expectations of participating in the Olympic or Paralympic Games can also vary in light of the media background.
If you ask sports science and especially (sports) psychology, the answer to motivation is quickly and clearly clarified: a continuous phenomenon reaching from amotivation to intrinsic motivation within various degrees of controlled and autonomous motivational regulations shape self-determination, including that of athletes. But what if you ask communication science and, above all, the athletes themselves? There is hardly nothing to be found in the Routledge Handbook of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Billings (2008) and Pedersen (2013)deal with the content of the media, but the influence of the media on athletes is largely missing.
But in Paris 2024, one thing was clear: the athletes are subject to constant media scrutiny at the Olympics and increasingly also at the Paralympics, cameras and sports journalists are closer than ever before, and many of the athletes’ statements clearly showed the pressure of the media. For this article, we therefore asked participants in the Olympic and Paralympic Games from various nations about their motivations, including the influence of mass media and sports journalistic reporting.
“The media pressure on me is great. The journalists’ questions always indirectly address the expectation of a medal,” says Germany’s paracanoe athlete Edina Müller, gold medalist in wheelchair basketball (2012) and paracanoe (2020/21). “In terms of the media, a lot has happened for us during the competitions since my first Games in 2008, but unfortunately very little in the time between the Games. I don’t just want to take part. There are no clear reasons, you don’t do it for the money. National representation is nice, but it’s not my driving force. I proudly represent the flag, but above all I want to make Paralympic sport visible.”
The 41-year-old exceptional athlete, who ran as flag bearer for the German team in Paris and won a bronze medal at her fifth Games, is using the media as a means to draw attention to the situation in the sport. Rower Melani Putri from Indonesia, who competed in Tokyo in 2020/21, also points to the media: “I received a lot of attention in the media. I am participating at the Olympics to achieve personal goals, want to make the country proud, and raise the status of my parents and uphold high values in the Olympics.” And she addresses the Indonesian Ministry of Youth and Sports: “In my opinion, of course as an Indonesian athlete we want to give the best achievement in the Olympics. But in any case, there is a price that we must pay as athletes, and also the government should provide supporting facilities.”
An interesting aspect of motivation: The reward for an Olympic or Paralympic medal varies greatly from country to country, both financially and in some cases non-monetarily: In Germany, gold is worth the equivalent of around 22,300 US dollars, in Hong Kong 769,000 USD, in Indonesia 382,000 USD, and in the US 40,000 USD. In South Korea, you no longer have to do military service after winning a gold medal, and in Sweden there is nothing at all. Of the 206 countries and territories participating in the Paris Olympics, only 33 countries paid a bonus, 15 of them over 100,000 USD, the World Athletics Federation paid 50,000 USD for each gold medal independently (statistics). After a debate about remuneration in Germany, which is paid by the German Sports Aid and is fully taxable, a German drugstore chain announced that it would double the bonuses for German medal winners in Los Angeles in 2028.
The current observation of media communication in Paris 2024 and the statements of the athletes interviewed indicate an important and promising research topic for sports communication. The influence of sports and other media, the pressure on the protagonists themselves and their corresponding reaction, their dealings with (Olympic) media are growing. It would therefore be desirable to have studies that analyze this field more intensively in the future in the sense of profound (deep) mediatization, indirect (reciprocal) media effects and as Nölleke and colleagues (2021) explained “defensive mediatization strategies” of the protagonists.
