ABSTRACT
The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games were covered by over 21,000 accredited members of the media whose communications reached an estimated four billion people worldwide (London 2012, 2012). Widely known as ‘the social Olympics’ because of the range of media coverage available – from television to newspapers to websites to social media to smartphones – London 2012 offered news and information to a global audience as the world had never before experienced from an Olympic Games. A total of 10.8 million ticketholders attended the Games, leaving the vast majority of Olympic fans and followers to get their news and information about the Games from media outlets. Warman (2012) illustrated how important the media’s role has become in the Olympic Games, pointing out the stark difference between these London Olympics, which featured 2,500 hours of television coverage from Olympic Broadcasting Service, and those of 1948, the last time London hosted the Games, which included 64 hours of official Olympic television broadcast coverage. Along with the strong media presence in London, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) produced and provided a plethora of news and information for Olympic fans via several different outlets, including the https://London2012.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">London2012.com website, an active presence on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and two mobile apps and one mobile game.
