ABSTRACT
Based on the final report of the research project ‘Communication and the Olympics: the Challenge and Opportunity for Beijing 2008 in Intercultural Exchange’, commissioned by IOC-OSC following selection within the framework of the grand programme set up by the International Olympic Committee's Olympic Studies Centre (OSC), this book is the accomplishment of two years of hard work coordinated by Luo Qing with the cooperation of 12 distinguished research groups worldwide and contributions from nearly 50 professors, researchers, analysts, doctoral candidates and assistants. Back in October 2007 Luo Qing submitted our application to IOC-OSC and took encouragement from the feedback received in December 2007 from the grand programme selection committee comprising world-famous academic experts in the field of Olympic studies and representatives of the OSC. We then got to work on planning the project and presented it to each of our international cooperators in March 2008. This was when the first of the three stages into which the study was divided — media observatory, media collection and report content analysis — began, and the work continued throughout the year with the torch relay, the Olympic competitions, the online survey before and after the Olympics, the literature analysis at the Olympic museum (Lausanne, April 2008) and the International Olympic Academy (Athens, May 2008). This was followed by the organization of academic symposiums in Beijing (Asia Media Forum: Sports Communications and Globalizations), at Athens University in Greece, at Western Sydney University in Australia and at Musashi University in Japan, before returning to the Lausanne IOC for the presentation of the final report (March 2009), open discussion and final editing (until March 2010). This ‘long march’ has been a unique challenge as well as an opportunity for us all, testing our courage and aspirations, discovering exciting new aspects of communication and the Olympics, the West and East meeting through sports, the encoding and decoding of a mega media event, visual metaphor and hegemony.
