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Olympic Games
There’s quite a lot to cover here, but in short, all of my posts can be found through Games Time News
I was delighted to be back at the Games after missing out on Beijing and Tokyo due to covid. I also have published a couple of articles in The Conversation
The Beijing 2022 Games take place this month and you can catch all of my content over at Culture @ the Olympics with summaries on this dedicated page .
Unfortunately, I was not able to go to Tokyo, due to covid, but this didn’t stop me making a heap of content about what took place. Find all of it over at my Tokyo 2020 page.
Just back from the Lausanne YOG and what a whirlwind it has been. Most noticeable was the presence of esports, which included a dedicated zone in a building, as part of the cultural programme, along with some tournaments, conferences, a retro-gaming exhibition, and big stage demos.
What was particularly compelling about the presence of esports was the promotion of Swiss Made Games - nurturing the game developer community and putting them in closer contact with players. I had the chance to speak to a young player, Neo, who was a fantastic ambassador for the Swiss Esports Federation.
Very grateful to those walked me through the content.
Last weekend, I was in Argentina for the Olympism in Action Forum, invited by the International Olympic Committee to speak about doping. The event took place in advance of the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games. Here’s a quick overview of what took place, but it doesn’t really capture what I said in full.
Broadly speaking, I discussed how society must decide how far it is prepared to push health and longer lives, in order to come to terms with the doping dilemma. We live in times of profound experimentation with biotechnological changes, which make any notion of the natural athlete as a criterion of value within sport an historically redundant notion. This wider cultural shift is what calls into question the anti-doping mandate and is among the biggest problems our society has yet to solve.
A few years ago, I developed a course for Olympic athletes, as part of the International Olympic Committee learning initiative. I’m delighted to say that I’ll be developing a new version of this, which will feature all things digital. As a teaser, check out this Dos and Donts list for using social media as an athlete.
With over 35,000 views, this video is my most watched on YouTube, but aside from being an amazing display, what was especially beautiful was the fact that Intel made its show a daily feature within the Olympic park, taking place after the medals ceremonies.
In so doing, it may have achieved another Olympic first, by making part of the Opening Ceremony freely available to anyone who happened to be in the park.
It's well worth another watch....
The PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games was my 10th in total, Winter and Summer, 11th if you include the Youth Olympic Games, which I attended in 2014. Each Olympic Games is unique and, like a good novel, has story after story which characterise them in extraordinary historical terms. With Sydney 2000, it was the controversy around the contested land of Homebush Bay, juxtaposed against the eventual lighting of the Olympic cauldron by Cathy Freeman.
In Athens 2004 it was the feeling of the Games coming back to their origin with the shot put taking place within the Ancient stadium of Olympia, with Beijing 2008, China's first Olympic Games as host, it was the magnificence of the Opening Ceremony, set against the concerns about media freedom and human rights.
For London 2012, there was the transition from media to social media as the tipping point in content consumption, along with its controversial logo which made strides to transform how branding operated around the Olympic programme.
For Rio 2016, the first South American Games, discussions ensued around resident rights to remain, alongside concerns about corruption and the political turmoil surrounding the nation. These are just some of the stories that operate around the Games, some of which are matters of deep social concern, while others are snapshots of a society that help us understand more about a location, its people, and how the world makes sense of their values and political history.
PyeongChang 2018 was perhaps the most extraordinary of all in recent times, in terms of political discussions about how the Olympic Games contributes to global diplomacy. While sports officials are modest in their claims and expectations for Olympic participation to lead to significant political change, there does seem to have been an important series of outcomes from the conversation between North and South Korea, resulting from Olympic participation. I anticipate that this will be studied for many years to come, but watching what happens within this region for the next 5 years - and for future Olympic Games - will be fascinating.
While I was in PyeongChang, I made a series of videos, which cover subjects from virtual reality to Olympic diplomacy. You can find these on a dedicated page here.
Today marks the 33 years since the Opening Ceremony of the Sarajevo 1984 Olympic Winter Games and so I dedicated my afternoon to capturing some of its history. The most remarkable location is the Bob Sled track, which was built in concrete and survives to this day. It remains now as a living monument to the Games, although for the locals, it feels also like a forgotten place.
Draped in overgrown foliage and graffiti, I learned that it has become a popular place to come walking and, while the snow was too deep to walk its length today, I had the chance to see a few of its turns.
It's hard to know how to place this as an Olympic legacy. It has become a tourist attraction, that much is clear. Yet, it does not resonate with conventional legacy language. After all, it has become a line of desire, rather than a purposeful sports facility. However, I think it is all the richer for this, and there is something truly authentic about it, as a manifestation of cultural heritage, re-worked by the local community.
Clearly, the 1990s war broke continuity for the city, in terms of many things, but also that Olympic legacy. The cable car running from the city to the mountain venue was lost - but is being re-built I am told. Also, many Olympic buildings were destroyed. So, there is something also compelling about the robustness of this unusually permanent concrete bob sled run. So, I am comfortable with talking about this monument as a feature of Sarajevo's Olympic legacy. Like the most effective legacies, they have to arise from a process of re-negotiation, re-ownership, and be sites of active value creation for a community. This area enjoys each of these features and, for this reason, i'm sure it will continue to be of historical significance and worthy of protection. And if that wasn't enough, you can also mountain bike down the run, which has to be completely awesome!
My trip here has been all the richer for venturing out to see this amazing site and I hope you will agree that there is a beauty to this Olympic heritage, even if it was not the one intended when it was imagined.
Draped in overgrown foliage and graffiti, I learned that it has become a popular place to come walking and, while the snow was too deep to walk its length today, I had the chance to see a few of its turns.
It's hard to know how to place this as an Olympic legacy. It has become a tourist attraction, that much is clear. But it does not resonate with conventional legacy language. After all, it has become a line of desire rather than a purposeful sports facility. Yet, I think it is all the richer for this, and there is something truly authentic about it, as a manifestation of cultural heritage, re-worked by the local community.
Clearly, the 1990s war broke continuity for the city, in terms of many things, but also that Olympic legacy. The cable car running from the city to the mountain venue was lost - but is being re-built I am told. Also, many Olympic buildings were destroyed. So, there is something also compelling about the robustness of this unusually permanent concrete bob sled run.
My trip here has been all the richer for venturing out to see this amazing site and I hope you will agree that there is a beauty to this Olympic heritage, even if it was not the one intended when it was imagined.
As my 10th Olympic Games, Rio 2016 was a long time coming, having seen it through from bid stag to completion and, in recent years, working more closely with the media operations team at the International Olympic Committee.
While here, I shot around 100gb of photographs, attended around 20 sports, wrote 4 articles for the news, interviewed for around 20 different outlets, re-designed and wrote for a magazine, and continued by longitudinal research into media change at the Olympics, this time focused on social media and new forms of broadcasting. Articles to follow.
I also made a film about life in one of Rio's favela, and even managed to publish a two page spread in the Times Higher Education about social media (unrelated to the Games!). It has been an epic fortnight, my most productive Games yet and it is possible thanks especially to the University of Salford, Manchester , which continues to support me tremendously in all my endeavours.
Over the last year, I've been following the IOC Agenda 2020 recommendation actions around creating an Olympic Channel, which launches on 21st August, straight after the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Here's the article I wrote about it for The Conversation.
As the Rio 2016 games draw to an end, the Olympic Channel begins its life. Following its launch at the closing ceremony of the games, the channel will completely change how we consume television in the future. This new digital platform will operate 24/7 to fill the gap in between games with local, national, and international sporting events. The Olympic Channel is a world first in broadcast history, and may be the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) most strategic move for a decade.
As things stand, the Olympic movement is almost entirely financed by the exclusive sale of broadcast rights. About 74% of the IOC’s total income is derived from this source; the largest chunk of which comes from American broadcaster NBC. For years, critics have said that this leaves the Olympic Games very much in the pockets of television executives – so much so that events are reportedly rescheduled to suit television audiences, rather than athletes.
Yet we live now in a digital era, and television has changed dramatically since the IOC started these contractual arrangements in the 1980s. Today, television sits alongside social media, as more broadcasters produce content for platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.
Twitter is making deals to livestream full Olympic matches within its platform, and the IOC even has its own YouTube channel, which it has been using as an archive of Olympic footage since Beijing 2008. It recently started to upload full match episodes from previous games, which are gathering the lion’s share of the channel’s views.
With such developments proceeding apace, the future of television is uncertain; which makes NBC’s recent decision to pay an unprecedented amount for the US rights to the Olympics until 2032 a significant gamble. By this time, televisions will just be screens onto which we push content from our mobiles. The IOC knows that the days of the television as an operating system are over – and its new Olympic Channel reflects this.
It might seem odd to have an Olympic Channel when the games are not on, but in fact it could well offer users a service they didn’t know they needed: that is, a way of connecting with the athletes they care about, in between the games. The channel also wants to own the hyper-local sports experience, which is currently under-resourced by most international and national sports federations. It wants people to log in and follow their sport, and it wants local clubs to broadcast their events.
The channel will start off as a facility to fill the gap between the games. But it won’t make sense to ask followers to tune out once the Olympics begin simply to satisfy broadcasters who have paid to cover them. Instead, it’s likely that those broadcasters will use the platform, and become a big part of it going forward.
The channel also has third-party integration, to make the most of the mobile experience. You can follow Spotify playlists by your favourite athletes, so that you can train to the same music. You can share your data and track your progress using Samsung’s S Health application (Samsung is an Olympic partner). And you can play interactive games during sports events, so that you don’t switch off from the content and spread your attention elsewhere.
The IOC is playing the long game, and their initiative could become the Facebook of the sports world. Once the platform has a loyal following, the IOC will be able to monetise this in unimaginable ways – perhaps it could even renegotiate its relationship with television broadcasters and sell advertising directly. But it’s likely that some crucial deals will be struck before this situation arises.
For now, the channel will deliver exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage of the games, which will extend viewer interests well past the closing ceremony and into the next Olympic cycle. For a long time, the IOC has emphasised that it is not a content creator for the Olympic Games. But while the channel is not yet covering the games, the fact that it comes out of the Olympic Broadcasting Services (the organisation which shoots all the sport content at the Olympics) means that there will be increasing overlaps between the two.
The challenge will be to ensure that this adds value to the broadcast offer – rather than detracts from it – so that the IOC remains affluent. That said, if the Olympic Channel can run its own advertising and sponsor campaigns, then it can cut out the television middle-man and do exactly what social media does today.
For a century, the Olympic Games have been a litmus test for media change, with slow motion replay, 3D television and virtual reality all being pioneered at the games. This year, organisers have boasted about how Rio 2016 is the first games to be consumed on mobile first and televisions second. Looking at the state of the media today – where companies like CNN are showing a median viewer age of 61 – it’s hard to see much future for television, as we presently know it. But one thing’s for sure – you’ll still be able to watch the Olympics.
Andy Miah, Chair in Science Communication & Future Media, University of Salford
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
One of the slightly more unusual stories I've interviewed here, while in Rio, but I have been very aware of the occurrence. Here's the BBC piece on why fans are booing and what it tells you about Brazil.
For the next 17 days, I'll be working at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. This will be my 10th Olympic Games, including Winter, Summer, and Youth, since Sydney 2000. At every Olympic Games, I have multiple roles and agendas.
Since London 2012, I have been working with the IOC Young Reporters' Programme, led by Anthony Edgar, who is the IOC's Head of Media Operations. Understanding how the media work is one part of this work and it's really ethnographic, as I work among the journalists. I also use the opportunity to develop my own practice as a journalist, but I'm not nearly in the same category of those people who work on assignment after assignment, day after day. Over the years, I have got to know quite a few of the best journalists that come to the Games and they have an extraordinary work ethic.
Most accredited people at the Games - if not everybody - has a very specific role to play and often only see a fraction of what happens around an Olympic city. Part of what I try to do in my research, is obtain a holistic sense of the operation, which means going to sports, press conferences, local neighbourhoods, and understanding how the city runs the Games.
I'll also give a talk at a conference while here, and interview a lot for the media. It's a full on fortnight. The last 8 Olympic Games are being written up in my next book, Sport 2.0, coming out with MIT Press next year. It's the end of an era - the first decade of social media - and it's fantastic to be at yet another Olympic city. This will be my third book to write about the Olympic Games, but it goes much broader than that, into all things digital, from social media to virtual reality.
There's no better way to get to know a city and its community than to examine it through the lens of the Olympic Games and I look forward to leaving Rio a little more of a Carioca than before I came. Show time.
This week, I interviewed for BBC Newshour Extra on the state of the Olympic movement. We covered everything from the role of arts in the Olympics, the rise of e-sport, the importance of nationalism and, of course, the doping debate. It is a really fun programme, with some pretty serious issues covered. Take a listen here
Yesterday, I was interviewed on live Russian tv, following the IOC anti-doping Summit, which took place in Lausanne. The outcome of the summit was as good as it was likely to get for Russia - the Olympic team is ok to compete, but a blanket ban on track and field athletes, with the right for individuals to prove their innocence. The means by which they do this is still a bit unclear, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport will be the key legal vehicle through which to do this.
My view is really simple, the Russian situation is a symptom of a broken system and there have been and will be others that will fall foul to similar circumstances. I am completely against state sponsored doping as it was previously known, but supportive processes to allow athletes to enhance their performance through supervised and safer means is a better way to protect athletes and a level playing field. It will be a different kind of equality to that which we have now, but it will be more transparent, fairer for all, and ensure we no longer look upon sports performances with suspicion.
This week, I am in Lausanne for the Sport Future Rendezvous 2016 conference, organized by good friend Professor Jean-Loup Chappelet at the University of Lausanne. I took the chance to talk about the biodigital interface, the growth of e-sport, biotechnological change, ingestible sensors, and virtual realities. But the big controversy, as always, was my views around doping, which did hijack the futures debate a little. In any case, here's my presentation.
Thanks to Michel Filliau for the photograph.
Last week, I was interviewed by the Danish media outlet Zetland, a cool new online portal for all kinds of radical news. This feature was about the possibility of a Danish Paralympian being competitive for a medal at the Olympic Games. While Oscar Pistorius may have been the first prosthetically enhanced athlete to take part in the Olympic Games, Markus Rehm may be a medal contender, providing he is allowed to compete.
Here is the full article, in Danish. Google translate doesn't do a bad job.
It includes this neat little video of Markus jumping
My slides from the 7th International Olympic Committee Athletes' Forum, which focused on the use of media to empower and enable people. Also, here is the programme from the event.
This week, Rio marked the 1 year to go anniversary before the opening of the Olympic Games. I always try to get to an Olympic city ahead of the event and spent my time here attending the official press conference of the organizers in the morning, and the civic protest in the afternoon. Here's what the latter looked like. It was a small group and very peaceful. It was also not focused only on the Olympics, but instead a range of groups were present, all of whom have complaints that may be tied to the wider changes around the city.
Today saw the launch of the International Olympic Committee MOOC on Sport and the Media, which I led. We have some of the world's leading media pros in the course, including the IOC's Heads or Communications, Media Operations, and Social Media. We also have ABC Broadcaster Tracey Holmes, photographer extraordinaire Nick Didlick, awesome video journalist Yuval Lion, and athlete Jonathan Edwards MBE. The course is free to access and is designed to guide athletes towards a career in the media, after they conclude their life in competition. Subjects covered include broadcasting, writing, photography, video journalism, corporate communications, social media, and future media developments. Something for everyone!
