Local Media and the Olympic Bidding Process: A political economic analysis of Calgary’s 1988 and 2026 Olympic pursuits

This research project explores how changes to the political economy of the local media industry impact public opinion by analyzing two case studies: Calgary’s successful bid for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games and the city’s failed bid exploration for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The Olympic Games embody a melange of social, cultural, political, and economic elements alongside distinct urban, sporting, and media dimensions. I focused on scholarly literature pertaining to 1) the sports-media complex and changes to specific media industries, 2) relevant aspects of the Olympic Games and the Olympic bidding process, and 3) Calgary’s Olympic bid pursuits and how they are situated in the contemporary bidding environment. In this, the sports-media complex encompasses the fundamentally inseparable relationship between the sports and media commercial capitalist industries and their prime commodity: the audience. This study employed qualitative methods, highlighted by the 14 semi- structured one-on-one interviews I conducted with individuals involved in, or experts on, one or both of these case studies; I then performed a thematic analysis and identified five themes. In this paper, I emphasize the second theme: the role of the changing local media industry. This analysis demonstrates that the political economy of the local media in Calgary, particularly the newspaper industry, has decayed dramatically since the late 1970s. With this knowledge, I argue that this decay presents tangible and worrying consequences for the contemporary information landscape and concretely harms the ability of citizens to be adequately informed on matters of public policy.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication and Media Studies

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Halajian, Matthew

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Taylor, Gregory

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Hiller, Harry
• Stowe, Lisa Roxanne

• Political economy of communication
• local media
• newspaper
• sport-media complex
• audience commodity
• public opinion
• Olympics
• Olympic bids
• Calgary

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/46375

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/118778