Research Department "Global Governance", WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany.
Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script", Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 16;19(8):e0308702. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308702. eCollection 2024.
Non-democratic regimes have increasingly been hosting major sports events to boost their visibility and image abroad, which sparked debates about the potential for "sportswashing". Using the case of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar we examine how the framing of the tournament influenced opinions about Qatar abroad. Our pre-registered survey experiment with more than 14,000 respondents in eight European countries conducted before the tournament shows that framing it in light of human rights issues in Qatar leads to more negative attitudes towards the host of the World Cup. In contrast, frames emphasizing Qatar's organizational capacity improve respondents' attitudes. The heterogeneity of effects across countries highlights the relevance of the national information environment for the effects of major sports events on public opinion. These findings suggest that critical media coverage could potentially mitigate sportswashing efforts while uncritical coverage can increase the legitimacy of autocracies.
非民主政权越来越多地主办重大体育赛事，以提高其在国外的知名度和形象，这引发了关于“体育洗白”的争论。本文以 2022 年卡塔尔世界杯为例，探讨了世界杯的举办方式如何影响国外对卡塔尔的看法。我们在世界杯前对 8 个欧洲国家的 14000 多名受访者进行了预先注册的调查实验，结果表明，将世界杯置于卡塔尔人权问题的框架下，会导致人们对世界杯主办国产生更负面的看法。相比之下，强调卡塔尔组织能力的框架则会改善受访者的态度。这些效应在各国之间的异质性突出了重大体育赛事对公众舆论影响的国家信息环境的重要性。这些发现表明，批判性的媒体报道可能会在一定程度上减轻“体育洗白”的努力，而不具批判性的报道则会增加独裁政权的合法性。
