working paper no 1 signaling beijing 2008 091123
TRANSCRIPT
8/3/2019 Working Paper No 1 Signaling Beijing 2008 091123
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Working Paper Series
Mainzer Papers on Sports Economics & Management
#1) The Perception of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in Chinaand the World (November 2009)
HOLGER PREUSS (corresponding author)Institute of Sport Science
University of Mainz
Albert-Schweitzer Str. 21
55099 Mainz, Germany
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
This paper provides an analysis on internet news reports about the Beijing Olympic
Games 2008. We focused on how China signaled throughout the Olympics to internal
and external target groups. The analysis shows how the cultural areas “China”,
“USA”, “Europe” and the “Rest of the world” perceived the Games. The results were
interpreted regarding, firstly, the principal agent theories' signaling to reduce
information asymmetry for business and tourism and, secondly, costly signaling to
generate symbolic capital.
740 news reports were collected between July 1st and September 30th 2008, using
“Google Alerts” with the keywords “Olympic Games Beijing 2008”. The reports were
analysed with a quantitative content analysis using a coding frame. The results show
that China used the Games to signal towards target groups, primarily to potential
business partners/investors. The four cultural areas observed have different patterns
on how communication about the Olympics was perceived in their media reports.
However, Chinas success to signal positively was weakened by several negative news
reports.
Faculty of Social Science, Media and Sport
Institute of Sports Science
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Saarstr. 21
55099 Mainz
Germany
CHRISTIAN ALFS
Institute of Sport Science
University of Mainz
Albert-Schweitzer Str. 21
55099 Mainz, Germany
Email: [email protected]
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Table of Content
1. Introduction........................................................................................................... 1
2. Literature Review.................................................................................................. 2
3. Theoretical considerations and framework............................................................. 5
4. Methodology and Research Design........................................................................ 7
5. Results................................................................................................................. 10
6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 14
7. References........................................................................................................... 15
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1. Introduction
The investment of taxpayers´ money for Olympic Games often relies merely on fiscal
growth externalities. However, due to the transitory nature of the directly induced
economic impact by Olympics (Preuss, 2007a), there is ongoing controversy whether
the monetary impact is positive for the host city (Matheson, 2009; Heisey, 2009;
Baade & Matheson, 2004; Késenne, 1999; Crompton, 1995; Getz, 1994). A broader
consensus among these authors seems to exist about the intangible factors induced
by staging mega sport events (Szymanski, 2002, 9). The most prominent intangible
effect of Olympics is the “free” promotion effect for the location (Chalip & Costa,
2006; Preuss, 2007a; Ritchie & Smith, 1991) and the non-use values such as thepopulations’ happiness and national pride (Barget & Gouguet, 2008; Bruni & Porta,
2007). Consequently, major sport events may be perceived primarily as a public
investment in the regional image and, thereby, be used as a signaling tool for the
host as, for example, a business location and tourism destination, aiming at the
reduction of informational deficiencies with regard to potential investors and
visitors. The economic impact closely related to the event is rather a side effect than
the very goal and legitimacy of subsidies (Kurscheidt, 2007). Moreover, regional
development strategies should not be focused on just one event as the policy
intervention. Rather, bundling different events into a portfolio and embedding them
into a broader strategy of place marketing and economic growth should lead to long-
term development success (Gratton, Shibli, & Coleman, 2005; Chalip, 2004; Gratton,
Dobson, & Shibli, 2000;). The potential role of an effective signaling to support such
endeavours is therefore of high interest.
The intent of this study is to find out how China and Beijing used the 2008 Olympic
Games in Beijing, which were staged from August 8th
to 24th
, to signal towards
internal (national) and external (international) audiences. Additionally, we evaluated
how the perception of these Chinese Olympic Games in the Chinese media differed
from European media, US-American media and media from the rest of the world.
Therefore, we collected Internet news articles about the Beijing Olympic Games
using the “Google Alerts” tool over a period from July 1st to September 31st 2008.
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Furthermore, we distinguished between positive and negative internet-news reports
from different regions (China, USA, Europe and others) to detect whether different
cultural zones reported differently about the Games and thereby educated their
population differently by the Internet news reports.
2. Literature Review
For this paper we will use two signaling theories to show how China used the
Olympic Games in Beijing to signal information to target groups, particularly tourists
and decision makers of international corporations.
This study is based on content analysis of Internet news reports about the Olympic
Games 2008 (Krippendorff, 2004; Berelson, 1971). However, the intention is not to
analyse the content in terms of sport coverage or the organizational progress, but
the information produced about China as a potentially interesting place for tourists
and foreign direct investments. Furthermore, we intend to look at the overall public
relations the communist party of China was doing throughout the Games.
In the past some research was done on media content analysis of Olympic Games
(Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995; Schantz & Gilbert, 2001), however, we
could find only a few research proposals on Beijing 2008 (Bladen, 2008; Finlay & Xin,
2008; Horne, 2008; Luo et al., 2008), with none of them concentrating on signaling.
The special focus on signaling through a mega (sport) event is not new. Due to the
great worldwide interest in the Games and the “media hype” (Preuss, 2007b)
Olympic Games provide an important public relations opportunity. In earlier times
one motivation to stage the Games was to demonstrate the superiority of a political
system. The communist regimes of the 1970s and 1980s as well as the German Reich
in 1936 saw the Games as a chance to prove the superiority of their systems
(Riordan, 2007; Riordan & Arnaud, 1998; Krüger, 1972). More recently, the
motivation has been to announce or demonstrate major changes in the host city and
country to the world. For example, Munich wanted to show that West Germany had
rid itself of its Nazi past (Guttmann, 2002; Daniels, 1996). South Korea wanted to
showcase its modern, high-technology national industries and replace its image as a
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developing country (Denis, Dischereit, Song, & Werning, 1988). Australia used the
Games to enhance the tourist image of Australia as a whole and not just of Sydney
(Morse, 2001) and was keen to raise its international profile as "being more than
merely a good source for raw material" (Parker, 2001, 9). Finally, Beijing was keen to
demonstrate the growing importance of China to the world economy by delivering
'High-Tech Games' (Lin, 2004) as well as to demonstrate it’s great cultural past,
which is interesting for tourism.
Signaling is used in many fields and aspects of life. It refers to sending out signals to
convey information about unobservable qualities of the sender in order to minimize
the information asymmetry or to accumulate symbolic capital.
There are many disciplines of science using signaling theory, such as information
economics (Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Rothschild & Stiglitz, 1976; Spence, 1973;
Akerlof, 1970), business and marketing (; Cai, Duxbury, & Keasey, 2007; Boulding &
Kirmani, 1993), anthropology, biology and evolutionary science (Palmer & Pomianek,
2007; Bliege-Bird & Smith, 2005; Getty, 2002; Cronk, 1994; Nur & Hasson, 1984;
Zahavi, 1975) and sociology (Veblen, 1994 [1899]; Bourdieu, 1977; Mauss, 1924).
Out of these different approaches to signaling, we will focus specifically on two
signaling theories. First, we draw parallels to the reduction of information
asymmetry such as used in the principal-agent-theory by Spence (1973) who firstly
explained the theoretical framework in his job market-signaling example. Second, we
will draw attention on the costly-signaling theory developed in particular in
anthropology and sociology (Veblen, 1994 [1899]; Bourdieu, 1977; Zahavi, 1975).
Signaling theory is an essential part of the principal-agent-theory described by
Jensen & Meckling (1976). A fundamental aspect of the principal-agent-theory is the
information asymmetry between a better-informed agent and a less-informed
principal. The principal does not exactly know the intention and the motivation of
the agent. Agent and principal have an overall common aim, however the agent does
not only want to maximize the principals benefit, but also his own. Due to the
hidden characteristics of the agent during the selection the principal may choose
agents with suboptimal characteristics. This management problem is called "adverse
selection". In order to decrease the information asymmetry, either signaling,
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screening or self-selection can be used. In the signaling approach, the agent can send
signals to convey otherwise hardly observable qualities and information to the
principal and thereby lowers the probability of an adverse selection. However, it is
only beneficial for the agent to produce a signal if the advantage of the production
of signals is greater than the costs to produce it, while the opposite is true for the
competitors (Picot, Dietl, & Frank, 2005), which is also called a separating
equilibrium (Spence, 1973).
Another type of signaling theory is the costly-signaling theory. Whenever the
communication is not based on a fact but on overall public relations messages such
as showing the superiority of a political system, the strength of a country or its
development, often costly-signaling can be observed. Not much general research is
available regarding costly-signaling throughout mega sport events. Clausen (1997)
first mentioned a kind of event signaling as a strategy to use cultural events to signal
information about a place. Kurscheidt (2006, 2009) and Preuss (2007a, 2007b) later
investigated sport-event signaling in greater detail. Garcia (2007) also focused on
Olympic Games signaling, but rather indirectly only on the production of cultural
symbolic capital.
This costly-signaling theory was first mentioned by Veblen (1994 [1899]) and first
published in the context of theoretical biology by Zahavi (1975). Also being called
"handicap principle", this theory describes the use of costly signals, which are
supposed to be hard to imitate because of inherent signaling costs, to reliably
convey information about the sender. The sender has to invest significantly into
these signals and the less they are of use the more trust-worthy they are. An
example from biology for costly signals are large antlers on deer, which are hard to
maintain and can be seen as a potential risk to the owner. So, being able to maintain
such large (not useful and therefore risky) antlers signals eligibility for being a
potential mate or ally (Palmer & Pomianek, 2007). Veblen (1994 [1899]) and
Bourdieu (1977) illustrate costly signaling by saying that conspicuous expenditures
are an ultimately strategic action designed to build up and accumulate symbolic
capital. Thereby, the highest profits in symbolic capital can be attained when
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someone acts in ways that reliably demonstrate lack of interest in material
acquisition by engaging in conspicuous consumption and therefore lavish spending.
3. Theoretical considerations and framework
The theoretical considerations about the framework of our study are described in
Fig. 1. Deeper detail and description on the framework can be found in Preuss
(2007b, 79-82).
Fig. 1: Flow of information about the Olympic Games throughout national and international
media
Source: Preuss (2007b, 80)
The Chinese government, consisting of the ruling Communist Party (CP), has control
over the organizing committee of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (BOCOG) and
constitutes the interior politics, providing great influence on the organization of the
Beijing Olympic Games themselves. The CP also has control over the Chinese media.
Signaling Chinas power, unity, self-confidence and other content created potential
conflict with the interior and exterior political environment. These factors effect the
Focus of this
stud
Olympic Games
Beijing 2008(Spor t & Message)
Location Factors
SignalingInfo Asymmetry
InternationalMedia
Communist Party China (CP)
Symboli c Capital
CostlySignaling
Exterior Politics
BOCOG
Interior Politics
NewsReports
NationalMedia
International Audience(Poli ti cians, Investors, Tour ists)
NewsReports
Control
Collective Memory
National Audience(Investors, Population)
negati ve
positive positive
Control
negati ve
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realization and the conducting of the Olympics, also influencing the messages sent
by them.
Chinese and international media reported on the Games. Negative news from
Chinese media were basically blocked and not published, at least for the most part.
In China, the governmental news agency Xinhua is exclusively responsible for
permission and distribution of information from abroad. “Media companies that
want to sell information and images to China have to censor themselves and are not
allowed to deliver news which ’…endanger Chinas national security, reputation and
interests…’. Beyond that and according to the vague regulations, pieces of
information are not allowed, that ’…endanger the economic and social order…’ or
that ’…endanger the social stability…’. Similar regulations apply for information that
’…undermine Chinas national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity…’” (n.n.,
2006a). The Olympic coverage for the Chinese population can be used successfully
for the internal political agenda. The positive news reports precisely meet the needs
of many Chinese people, because the Chinese public associates way more to winning
the bid to host the Games back in 2001 than just the honour of being the host.
Winning the bid comforts the wounds in the national sentiment caused by 150 years
of colonization attempts by the west, terrible attacks by Japan and not least many
self-destructive years of Cultural Revolution. By hosting the Olympic Games China
feels strong again, accepted as a global power, just the way it has seen itself for the
last 2000 years (Preuss & Guder, 2008; Seitz, 2006).
The international media reported more openly and the news outside China was not
to be controlled by the CP. However, the generally positive news on the sports was
influenced by the "collective memory" the world media has about previous Chinese
political actions and also about Chinas role at previous Olympics. The international
media compared all actions taken by the host nation regarding the Olympics to
previous actions in order to formulate their news reports accordingly. That is the
reason why messages about human rights, Tibet, doping, environment etc. were
constantly used in foreign media news.
The focus of this study, as highlighted in Figure 1, was analysing the Internet news
reports from Chinese and international media. What content was reported, to
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whom? What were the differences between the news reports from Chinese and
international media in different parts of the world?
Fig. 1 further illustrates how the national and international media were addressing
the target groups. On the one hand the positive news reports from China can be
seen as a reduction of information asymmetry (showing the strengthened location
factors of the capital Beijing and China in general) as well as the building up of
"symbolic capital" through costly signaling, e.g. by constructing the Olympic venues
in an impressing architecture much more costly than a normal sufficient venue and
way ahead of time. The positive reporting of the international media addressed the
same effects. However, the negative reporting added further information about
China. Due to the globalization the Chinese audience was also partly aware of this
reporting.
4. Methodology and Research Design
This study is based on quantitative content analysis (Krippendorf, 2004; Berelson,
1971), in our case a quantitative analysis of Internet news using a coding frame.
For the data collection we used “Google Alerts”, which is a service offered by the
Internet conglomerate Google. “Google Alerts” sends out daily emails with links to
news reports on keywords - for this study we used “Olympic Games Beijing 2008”.
Accordingly, mostly news reports in English were collected, which come either from
English-speaking areas of the globe (USA, Europe) or from sources that target an
international audience like the host China itself. This way 740 news reports were
collected over the period from July 1
st
to September 30
th
.
“Google Alerts” is a tool working with the so-called "Google PageRank-algorythm"
(Brin & Page, 1998). More precisely, "Google Alerts" uses the StoryRank-version,
sorting out those news reports on which the highest number of other web pages link
to. In other words the assortment of news reports by "Google Alerts" concerning the
content is not given because the selection is based on the links from other pages to
each news report. Therefore our analysis is not representative for the overall
content that was given by all news reports. Neither the overall number of news
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reports, nor the overall number of reports on a specific topic can be detected.
However, using "Google Alerts" we collected those English Internet news reports,
which were presumably most viewed. At least the selection of media news
represents those with the highest subjective importance and impact on the viewers.
During the time of data collection, the number of the daily news was limited to the
ten top news reports per day, with some days providing less than ten news reports.
The content of the news reports was analysed by three criteria. First, the origin of
the news reports was sorted in four geographical (and cultural) areas. We
distinguished China from the USA, Europe and the “rest of the world”. It is of interest
to identify a difference in reporting between the sender of the signals, China, and
the world power USA, the multicultural Europe with many small countries and the
"rest of the world". This last group is basically determined by news reports from
Canada (n= 75), Asia and the Middle East (n=53), Africa (n=24), Australia and New
Zealand (n=23) and South America and the Caribbean (n=5).
Second, the topics of the news reports were interpreted by their content, as
displayed in Tab. 1.
No Category Content N Category related to signaling
1 Sport Sport 303 news are logically the central
messages of the Olympics and will
not be analysed
2 Costly signaling High Tech; architecture;
great organization
24 news are related to costly-
signaling
3 Information
asymmetry:
Business
Business climate;
people; organizational
skills; security
81 news are related to reduce
“information asymmetry”
concerning China/Beijing as a
business relations4 Information
asymmetry:
Tourism
Tourism; people;
environment
30 news are related to reducing
“information asymmetry”
concerning China/Beijing as a
tourist destination
5 System critics Freedom of Press;
Human rights
47 news are related to positive or
negative criticism on the Chinese
political system
6 Others, non-
Olympic
Others and non-Olympic 263
Tab. 1.: Categories of content analysis related to signaling theory
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Category one includes information about the sport itself and is not focus of this
study. The second category consists of observation related to costly-signaling and
contains information about extraordinary state-of-the-art technology, modern
venues, impressive general infrastructure and great organisational skills of the
Chinese. These news reports are based on the costly-signaling approach, because it
was reported how China was spending enormous resources to convey information
building up symbolic capital (Veblen, 1994 [1899]; Bourdieu 1977). The third and
forth category relate to news reports narrowing the informational asymmetry to
attract tourists and to improve business relations and attract (foreign) investors.
These categories deal with the signaling providing information about given facts to a
less-informed receiver (principal), trying to bridge the information gap for otherwise
hard to attain information. The last analysed category is related to criticism on the
political system in China, which affects both China as a business and tourism
destination. A residual group contains 303 other news reports not important for the
focus of this analysis. These topic-related categories, being grouped from 27 original
and highly precise categories, meet the three criteria for coding frames, which are
precision, exclusivity and exhaustivity (Bortz & Döring, 2006).
Third, we differentiated between news reports assessing the topics in a negative way
and those doing it either in neutral or positive ways. Accordingly, news reports with
a negative judgment of it’s content, which are fairly easy to detect, are placed in the
“negative” category and the others in the “positive/neutral” category, which
provides a high degree of objectivity. Objectivity is maximised by conservative
interpretation of data - however, we must admit that we are still judging from a
European-socialised background. While the origin of the news demands no
subjective interpretation, it is more difficult with the interpretation of the content.
The collected news reports were analysed using a quantitative content analysis. The
reports are sorted according to a coding scheme, differentiating origin, content and
judgment of that content. This coding scheme can be exemplified with a sample
news report:
1) Origin: USA
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From those 182 reports analysed by category related to signaling it can be seen that
the highest percentage (43%) comes from China. The Communist Party was certainly
most interested in reducing the information asymmetry to attract future tourists and
direct foreign investments as well as using the Games to build up symbolic capital.
The other regions under consideration had only 16.7% (USA), 22.6% (Europe) and
24% (rest of the world) news reports fitting in the signaling categories.
Figure 3 illustrates the number of analysed news reports, distributed into the six
categories “Sports” (n=303), “Costly Signaling” (n=24), “System Criticism” (n=47),
“Information Asymmetry Business” (n=81), “Information Asymmetry Tourism”
(n=30) and “Others/non-Olympic” (n=263). It must be mentioned that we used 8
reports twice, because they fitted in two categories.
263
30
81
47
24
303
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Spor ts Cost ly Signal ing Sys tem
Criticism
Information
Asymmetry
Business
Information
Asymmetry
Tourism
Others/ non-
Olympic
Fig. 3: Share of news reports by category
Taking a closer look at the assessment of the content of the news reports, some
facts can be observed (Fig. 4). Whereas the reports on "System Criticism" show an
overall balanced assessment of 22 (47%) positive/neutral and 25 (53%) negative
reports, it is discernible that the Chinese media published mostly positive reports on
these topics (8 positive/neutral and just one negative published in Hong Kong
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regarding prejudices against the handicapped in Chinese society). The reports from
the USA and Europe are opposite, with 33% and 15% positive/neutral.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
C h i n a
U S A
E u r o p e
" R e s t "
C h i n a
U S A
E u r o p e
" R e s t "
C h i n a
U S A
E u r o p e
" R e s t "
C h i n a
U S A
E u r o p e
" R e s t "
Sys tem Cr it ici sm Cost ly Signal ing I nformati on Asymmet ry
Business
Information
Asymmetry Tourism
positive/ neutral negative
Fig. 4: Share of news reports by category, origin and value
All reports on topics related to costly-signaling were positive/neutral in their
judgement. In the categories “Information Asymmetry Business” and “Information
Asymmetry Tourism”, the results concerning the assessment are similar. All collected
news reports from Chinese sources were positive/neutral in both categories. US
media had 13 (76%) positive/neutral and 4 negative reports on business-related
topics and 6 (66%) positive/neutral and 3 negative news on topics used to reduce
the information asymmetry for potential tourists. From European media sources 5
(56%) positive/neutral and 4 negative news reports on “Information Asymmetry
Business” and 6 (86%) positive/neutral and 1 negative on “Information Asymmetry
Tourism” were collected.
While the real share of news on the Beijing Olympic Games cannot be analysed, we
can at least weight the number of reports in the different categories by their share
on all reports during the observed period. This way it can be seen what kind of
signaling pattern was most important among the mostly linked web news reports.
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Fig. 5: Reporting pattern on signaling through the Beijing Olympic Games 2008
Relatively seen Europe and the "rest of the world" were criticizing the political
system of China most, whereas only a small percentage of news reports from the
USA addressed "system criticism". More than half of all signalling-related reports
originating from China were about conveying information on business-related
location factors, which can be interpreted as the main focus of the signaling used by
the Chinese. Compared to the other origins, more US news reports dealt with “costlysignaling”, probably because of a general interest of the US-American public for
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extravagant things. However, in general it can be seen, that the reduction of
information asymmetries in the field of business and tourism was most important in
all regions under consideration.
6. Conclusion
The Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 created many news reports all over the word.
Many of them were related to signaling in all three analysed contexts (costly
signaling, info-asymmetry business & tourism).
This paper illustrated that Mega Sport Events, such as Olympic Games, can be used
by the host to signal towards interior and exterior audiences. As seen in Fig. 5,
where, for example, the host China used the world-wide media coverage to convey
information on business-related location factors to potential internal and external
investors. This is not new for Mega Sport Events. Being on the stage of the world
media, signaling regularly is used by "free riders" trying to use the media hype to
reduce information asymmetries, which are not related to the Olympic Games. In
China that was related to Tibetan conflicts as well as the attacks of the Olympic
Torch Relay just in order to criticise the Chinese politics. This abuse of the Olympic
media hype was also observable in Sydney 2000, where there were many reports
published on the treatment of Aborigines or in Atlanta 1996, where news reports
about the situation of the black population were communicated.
Its effectiveness for China and Beijing has to be determined more closely, since
negative news reports dampen the effect of the positive ones. It could be shown
that the effects of signaling efforts can also be negative, since international media
cannot be controlled by Chinese authorities. China must have been anticipating this
outcome. However, our results show that the positive news outweighed the
negative news reports. It is in particular to be seen that even the reports on "system
criticism" were more positive than negative in the "rest of the world".
The perception of the Beijing Olympic Games 2008 differed between the regions
“China”, “USA”, “Europe” and the “Rest”, with Europe and the “Rest” reporting in a
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quite different way about China. All concentrated mostly on transmitting business-
related information.
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