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BillingsBrownetal.2013-5535HoursofImpact-1.pdf
5,535 Hours of Impact: Effects of Olympic Media on Nationalism Attitudes
Andrew C. Billings, Kenon A. Brown, and Natalie A. Brown
Past studies have shown how international events such as the Olympic broad-
cast tend to favor athletes from a home nation in terms of both the amount
of time devoted and the descriptions ascribed to home-nation athletes. This
study highlights the ramifications of this focus on nationalism within the 2012
London Olympic telecast. A survey of 342 respondents at three different points
in time (immediately before the Olympics, immediately after, and one month
after) was conducted to determine the relationship between Olympic media
exposure and nationalistic attitudes. Results showed that heavy viewers of the
Olympics displayed significantly higher levels of nationalism, patriotism, in-
ternationalism and smugness than light viewers of Olympic media. Moreover,
regarding differences between measurements before and after the Olympics,
only smugness increased over time. Theoretical extrapolations of cultivation
effects are offered, as are directions for future research.
Predictions of the demise of NBC’s Olympic coverage proved unfounded in 2012,
as primetime ratings increased 12% from the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Sandomir,
2012). This ratings increase surprised many given that swimming and gymnastics
were shown live in China while all primetime events were tape delayed in 2012.
In fact, the 2012 Olympic Games garnered the most cumulative/unique Ameri-
can viewers of any program in television history (Hiestand, 2012). In an age in
which niche media consistently trends higher, the Olympics still proved to be the
only game in town; even ratings for teenaged girls increased 54% from the 2008
Olympics (Mullins, 2012). Moreover, when combining all of NBC’s television and
Internet platforms, a total of 5,535 hours (seven and a half months) of Olympic cov-
erage was available for consumption. The 2012 London Olympics proved to be the
Andrew C. Billings (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1999) is the Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting and Director of the Alabama Program in Sports Communication at the University of Alabama. His research interests primarily are within the intersection of sport, media, and identity issues.
Kenon A. Brown (Ph.D., The University of Alabama) is an assistant professor of public relations at the University of Alabama. His research interests include sport image and reputation management and media coverage of trends and issues in sports.
Natalie A. Brown is a doctoral student in communication and information sciences at the University of Alabama. Her primary research interests include crisis communication, sports communication, and social media.
© 2013 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 57(4), 2013, pp. 579–595 DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2013.850591 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online
579
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ultimate case of media saturation, as nearly everyone watched at least some portion
of the Games. The Olympics have become more than just a sporting event, but also
part entertainment offering, part reality show, and part international news coverage.
Yet the most common motivation for viewer consumption remains a nationalized
one: people watch to see their nation’s Olympians compete (Hogan, 2003).
The assumption that Olympic media promotes nationalism is hardly unusual
and—despite those who would hark back to a golden age of Olympism—not new.
Crowther (2004) claims ‘‘the Games have always been political,’’ (p. 451) and
Bairner (2001) notes that ‘‘sport and nationalism are arguably two of the most
emotive issues in the modern world’’ (p. xi). Given this claim, it is not surprising
that the Olympics are ‘‘as much a forum for fervent nationalism as they have been
about peaceful competition’’ (Butterworth, 2007, p. 187). Such tendencies have
no national boundaries (see Barnard, Butler, Golding, & Maguire, 2006; Larson
& Rivenburgh, 1991; Li, 2011); nationalism persists in all forms, yet with nations
varying widely in terms of degree of nationalistic tendency (Real, 1989).
American scholars have studied many Olympic Games, finding preferential treat-
ment for U.S. athletes in terms of clock-time/salience (Billings, Angelini, & Wu,
2011; Billings & Eastman, 2003) and description (Billings, MacArthur, Licen, &
Wu, 2009; Dyreson, 1996); yet relatively little work has been focused on the
ramifications that these nationalized images and discourses potentially wield within
society. Such explorations are of crucial import to mass media work, as nationalism
is presumed to be something to be avoided (NBC educates sportscasters to avoid
personal pronouns, for example; see Billings, 2008) because of potential transfer
of nationalized beliefs. However, the preponderance of work surrounding nation-
alism has presumed transfer more than pinpointing potential relationships between
media consumption and audience attitudes. To fill that relative knowledge gap,
342 Americans are surveyed before and after the 2012 London Summer Olympic
Games. In doing so, shifts in attitudes about nationalism (and the related measures of
patriotism, internationalism, and smugness) are pinpointed to determine the extent
to which ‘‘the biggest show on television’’ (Billings, 2008, p. 1) impacts overall
conceptions about the United States and all other nations.
Related Literature
Because the majority of work in the nexus of sport, media, and nationalism has
been content-oriented, the theories used to undergird communicative understand-
ings have typically involved a mix of framing (Goffman, 1974) and social identity
(Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The former is useful in postulating differences between what
is emphasized (home nations) and what is diminished or excluded because of that
emphasis (all other nations). The latter offered psychological ties to nationalism,
typifying the human tendency to embrace an in-group (athletes from one’s own
country) and create reasons why out-groups (athletes from all other countries) form
within this insular motivation. Both of these theories advance our understanding of
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Billings et al./OLYMPIC NATIONALISM 581
nationalism in global sporting contexts, yet also set the stage for the interrogation
of media effects under the lens of cultivation theory (Gerbner, 1998).
As later advanced by Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorielli, and Shanahan (2002),
cultivation involves setting the terms of societal debates through media content. For
instance, placing a ‘‘national debt clock’’ in the corner of a news program each
day would likely shape our debate by telling us that the debt is not only worthy of
our focus, but also worthy of our public debate as the rapidly escalating numbers
tinge the problem with urgency. Similarly, the Olympic telecast—particularly in
the United States—shapes debates of national import. When Kazakhstan enters the
arena for the Opening Ceremonies and Matt Lauer’s commentary references the
comedy Borat, an audience may be cued to a notion that this nation is not a
major player on the international stage. Relatedly, because of the exclusive rights
granted to NBC, moving images of events could not even be offered on other
media outlets, making NBC’s offerings central to perceptions of athletes and nations
worldwide. Thus, questions percolate regarding (a) the nationalistic images offered
in an Olympic telecast and (b) ramifications of these images in cultivating short-
and long-term effects on society.
Olympic Media Nationalized Content
Determining what constitutes nationalism has proven to be a difficult task in ana-
lyzing media surrounding the Olympic Games. Real (1989) proposed a nationalism
index, devising a percentage-based measure to determine how much coverage each
nation devoted to home athletes as opposed to all others. In his 1984 Olympic
analysis of newspapers, these percentages varied widely, ranging from Mexico’s
17.1% to the United States’ 79.0%. Real believed such analyses could confirm
previously held stereotypes, such as the ‘‘myopia that allows the United States to
slip into an ‘ugly American’ foreign policy of self-righteous indignation’’ (p. 239).
Two decades later, Billings (2008) applied similar percentages to television, yet
with an additional caveat: the percentage of exposure was then compared to the
percentage of medals won by that nation, resulting in a nationalism ratio. Thus,
when the United States would win 11–13% of the medals in a given Games, it was
compared to the 45–55% of coverage that would be devoted to American athletes
(Billings & Angelini, 2007) to create, roughly, a 4:1 ratio. Other nations, particularly
smaller ones, would yield higher ratios (e.g., winning 1% of the medals yet giving
15% of the coverage to home nation athletes would result in a 15:1 nationalism
ratio).
Regardless of the percentages and ratios involved, one matter is clear: local cover-
age is influenced by national interests (see Bernstein, 2000; Chen & Colapinto, 2010;
Zaharopoulos, 2007). Analyses of nationalism would then uncover dialogue differ-
ences between the home nation and all foreign nations, concluding that sportscasters
would describe the performances differently for the home country than for the rest
of the world in terms of (a) attributions of success, (b) explanations of failure,
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(c) characterizations of personality, and (d) descriptions of physicality (Angelini,
Billings, & MacArthur, 2012; Billings, Brown, Crout, McKenna, Rice, Timanus, &
Zeigler, 2008). American networks have long countered that the focus on U.S.
athletes is simply satisfying natural human appetites (Lewin, Barrett, & Bader, 1987).
NBC Olympic producer Molly Solomon contends: ‘‘Let’s be honest. Americans do
like to watch their countrymen : : : that’s the point of the Olympics’’ (in Billings,
2008, pp. 45–46); such overt choices have ramifications, as ‘‘masses of people
become highly emotional in support of their national team’’ (Kellas, 1991, p. 21).
Olympic Media Nationalism Effects
The Olympic telecast offers one of the greatest opportunities for Benedict Ander-
son’s (1983) conception of the ‘‘imagined political community’’ (p. 6) as people
select protagonists and antagonists based largely on nationalized boundaries rather
than any sense of knowing and/or meeting any of the athletes involved. As Kamenka
(1993) argues, such nationalism could be viewed in a multitude of manners, both
positive and negative as we could view it as ‘‘democratic or authoritarian, backward-
looking or forward-looking, socialist or conservative, secular or religious, generous
or chauvinist’’ (p. 85). What is already known about the effects of Olympic media
is that people can have an inflated sense of national prominence as a result of
network focus on athletes from a ‘‘home’’ nation. Billings (2008) found that while
U.S. athletes won 11% of all the medals awarded in the 2006 Torino Winter Games,
respondents believed that American athletes had won approximately 30% of all
medals, relating this nearly tripled amount to the NBC telecast that featured U.S.
athletes over 40% of the time within the primetime telecast.
In measuring the effects of Olympic nationalism within this study, an attempt
was made to avoid such distinctions between good and bad nationalism. Rather,
the goal was to determine relationships between the amount of Olympic media
consumption and respondent attitudes along broad conceptions of nationalized
attitudes. Foundational works from DeLameter, Katz, and Kelman (1969) and Li and
Brewer (2004) influenced categorical distinctions, yet Kosterman and Feshbach’s
(1989) study offered factor-analyzed categories useful for deriving hypotheses. The
first is patriotism, a concept that focuses more on pride in one’s own country without
comparison to other aspects. This is the factor in which the notion of cheerleading
is most directly gauged. Thus, Hypothesis 1 fuses this conception with previous
research regarding nationalism in Olympic media to postulate:
H1: Respondents consuming high amounts of Olympic media will score signif-
icantly higher on measures of patriotism than will respondents with lower
levels of Olympic media consumption.
The second factor is nationalism, which takes patriotism to a new level by comparing
the presumed superiority of one’s own nation to the inferiority of all other nations.
Thus, the conceptual definition of nationalism is tested in Hypothesis 2:
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Billings et al./OLYMPIC NATIONALISM 583
H2: Respondents consuming high amounts of Olympic media will score signifi-
cantly higher on measures of nationalism than will respondents with lower
levels of Olympic media consumption.
The third factor is internationalism, broadly defined here as a sense of global citi-
zenship, as the scales measure the degree in which people support the notion that
‘‘a rising tide raises all boats.’’ Internationalism is then tested in Hypothesis 3:
H3: Respondents consuming high amounts of Olympic media will score signif-
icantly higher on measures of internationalism than will respondents with
lower levels of Olympic media consumption.
The final Kosterman and Feshbach–based (1989) factor is smugness, which incorpo-
rates a blend of patriotism and nationalism, but in a more brazenly arrogant feeling
of vast superiority to all other nations. This type of nationalized smugness is tested
in the fourth hypothesis:
H4: Respondents consuming high amounts of Olympic media will score signif-
icantly higher on measures of smugness than will respondents with lower
levels of Olympic media consumption.
When combining these four factors, another collective hypothesis can be formed
using the Olympic nationalism work of Billings (2008) and Van Hilvoorde, Elling,
and Stokvis (2010), who both found exposure to international sports media signifi-
cantly increased overall nationalistic attitudes.
H5: Nationalistic attitudes will be collectively higher immediately following an
Olympic Games when compared to immediately before the Olympic Games.
A sixth hypothesis was based on the work of Elling, Van Hilvoorde, and Van
Den Dool (in press) as they explored nationalistic impact from sports media, noting
that it does exist, but that it dissipates relatively quickly. This hypothesis predicts a
downward trend in nationalistic effects after the Games have taken place.
H6: Nationalistic attitudes will be collectively higher immediately following an
Olympic Games than one month after the Olympic Games have ended.
Finally, the work of Billings (2008) found that people who watched a large amount
of the Olympics were more likely to report accurate reflections of individual and
national achievements. This study sought to determine whether this relationship
persists, formulating one final hypothesis:
H7: Respondents consuming high amounts of Olympic media will offer more
accurate reflections of the Olympic results than will respondents with lower
levels of Olympic media consumption.
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584 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2013
Method
To measure the effects of the 2012 London Olympic media coverage on viewer
attitudes about nationalism, an online survey was distributed at three different points
in time with a minimum goal of 100 respondents during each of the three collection
periods: (a) the week immediately preceding the Olympic Games [July 20–26,
2012]; (b) the week immediately following the Olympic Games [August 13–20,
2012]; and (c) the week after one month had passed following the Olympic Games
[September 17–24, 2012]. The second and third data collections occurred through
the use of Qualtrics, a Web-based survey research company, whose panels ensured
a representative national sample at these two data points. Qualtrics recruits its panel
participants through two methods: self-registration through a Web site and proactive
recruitment by representatives of the company through third-party lists. Participants
received cash-equivalent points that can be exchanged for airline miles, gift cards,
magazine subscriptions, and other rewards. The first collection (immediately prior
to the Games) still used Qualtrics for data collection, but recruitment was done
utilizing a snowball sample to ensure a comparative number of respondents in the
first sampling period. After the first group of participants was surveyed for the first
sampling period, they were then asked to refer other participants who would be
willing to take the survey and who were planning to watch Olympic coverage, with
an emphasis on referring participants of varying demographics. The three samples
were used to draw comparisons of nationalistic attitudes before Olympic coverage,
immediately after Olympic coverage, and one month after Olympic coverage.
Questionnaire and Procedure
Once participants were recruited for the study, they were prompted to visit a
distinct Web address that directed the participant to a questionnaire consisting of
four parts. Section A consisted of the informed consent form. This form provided a
description of the study, a guarantee of confidentiality and anonymity, and stressed
that participation was voluntary. If the participant agreed to the statement and
continued the study, Section B provided 24 total items used to measure the four
nationalistic and patriotic qualities: patriotism, nationalism, internationalism, and
smugness. Each quality was measured using a six-item, seven-point Likert scale
modified from Kosterman and Feshbach’s (1989) measure of patriotic and national-
istic attitudes and Billings’s et al. (in press) Olympic nationalism index. Scale items
were used to calculate a mean score for each of the four qualities—the higher the
score, the stronger the participant’s attitude in each quality. Table 1 provides the
items used in the study.
Cronbach’s alpha was used to measure the reliability of the four scales adapted
from Kosterman and Feshbach (1989) and Billings et al. (in press). The patriotism
(˛ D 0.902), internationalism (˛ D 0.753), and smugness (˛ D 0.915) scales all were
considered reliable, exceeding the standard threshold of 0.70. The nationalism scale
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Table 1
Scale Items Adapted From Kosterman and Feshbach (1989) and Billings (2012)
Alpha if
Item Deleted
Patriotism Scale (˛ D 0.902)
1) I love my country. 0.878
2) I am proud to be from my country. 0.879
3) In a sense, I am emotionally attached to my country and emotionally
affected by its actions.
0.893
4) Although at times I may not agree with the government, my commitment
to my country always remains strong.
0.875
5) It is important to serve my country. 0.883
6) When I see my country do well in events like the Olympics, I feel great. 0.900
Nationalism Scale (˛ D 0.691; ˛ D 0.814 after Item 5 was omitted)
1) It is important to honor our national history and heritage. 0.672
2) My country should try to influence other nations’ values. 0.547
3) It is important that my country wins in international sporting competitions
like the Olympics.
0.608
4) My country should be more forceful in influencing other countries when
it believes it is right.
0.527
5) Foreign nations can offer meaningful contributions to our nation’s
well-being. (RC)
0.814*
6) In events such as the Olympics, my country is more likely than other
countries to honor the rules and exhibit fair play.
0.597
Internationalism Scale (˛ D 0.753)
1) If necessary, we ought to be willing to lower our standard of living to
cooperate with other countries in getting an equal standard for every
person in the world.
0.687
2) The alleviation of poverty in other countries is their problem, not ours.
(RC)
0.828
3) My country should be more willing to share its wealth with other suffering
nations, even if it doesn’t necessarily coincide with our political interests.
0.655
4) I would be willing to decrease my living standard by 10% to increase
that of persons in poorer countries of the world.
0.665
5) I enjoy the Olympics more when I see many different countries winning
medals.
0.712
6) I wish all nations had equal resources to compete in an event such as the
Olympics.
0.713
Smugness Scale (˛ D 0.915)
1) I would never settle in another country. 0.923
2) My country’s flag is the best in the world. 0.895
3) I think people from my country are the finest in the world. 0.894
4) My country is the best country in the world. 0.892
5) My county best represents the ‘‘Olympic ideal.’’ 0.896
6) My country represents all that is right in the Olympics. 0.896
*Item was subsequently removed from measure.
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586 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2013
had a low initial reliability (˛ D 0.691), but after dropping one of the scale items,
the reliability was considered acceptable (˛ D 0.814). Therefore, the researchers
used only five of the six items from the nationalism scale for data analysis.
Section C provided six bogus information scale items that tested the participant’s
knowledge of the outcomes of the Olympics. These questions asked about the par-
ticipant’s knowledge of medal counts, media coverage, and country participation.
Only the participants in the second data collection (immediately after the Olympics)
were asked these questions. Finally, Section D provided demographic questions and
an open-ended question during the second and third data collections asking the
participant to specify the number of hours he or she devoted to watching media
coverage of the Olympics.
Once the questionnaire was designed, the experiment was pretested among 22 stu-
dents using manipulation treatments and survey questionnaires. The pretest data
were used to review the individual questions in order to edit the questionnaire, and
small functional adaptations were made accordingly. Statistical analyses of the data
collected were computed using SPSS for Windows, version 20.0.
Results
Overall, 342 participants answered the questionnaire. The first sample consisted
of 56 males and 75 females, and the mean age was 31.75 years (SD D 13.34 years)
with a range from 19 years old to 66 years old. The second sample consisted of
42 males and 58 females, and the mean age was 46.59 years (SD D 13.46 years)
with a range from 19 years old to 65 years old. The third sample consisted of
51 males and 52 females, and the mean age was 41.4 years (SD D 12.48 years)
with a range from 18 years old to 74 years old.
The participants from the second and third data collections were divided into
two groups according to the number of hours they watched Olympic media: low
consumers (participants that watched less than two hours) and high consumers
(participants that watched two hours or more). Given that NBC’s most popular
Olympic offering is the four-hour primetime telecast, the division was justified as
those who watched enough Olympic media per day that consumption would be
reached a level in which high consumers would have watched the equivalent of the
majority of the primetime telecast. Eighty-eight participants (43.3%) were considered
low consumers, and 115 participants (56.7%) were considered high consumers.
Impact of Media Consumption on Nationalistic Attitudes
The first four hypotheses examined the relationship between the amount of
Olympic media consumed and the participant’s nationalistic attitudes. Only data
collected from the second and third samples was used for the analysis, as the
first data collection occurred before London Olympic media commenced. For each
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hypothesis, a simple linear regression was used to determine if consumption of
Olympic media was a significant predictor of each of the four qualities, and an
independent-samples t-test was used to examine the difference in mean scores for
low consumers and high consumers. Table 2 provides the mean scores for each
of the four qualities and the scale items based on the level of Olympic media
consumption.
The first hypothesis stated that the more Olympic media a participant consumed,
the higher the participant would score on measures of patriotism. Based on the anal-
ysis, consumption of Olympic media was a significant predictor of patriotic attitudes
(R2 D 0.052, F(1, 201) D 10.94, p D 0.001). There was a significant difference in
the mean patriotism scores between low (M D 5.72) and high consumers (M D
6.18) (t(201) D 3.29, p D 0.001). Hypothesis 1 is supported.
The second hypothesis stated that the more Olympic media a participant con-
sumed, the higher the participant would score on measures of nationalism. Con-
sumption of Olympic media proved a significant predictor of nationalistic attitudes
(R2 D 0.069, F(1, 201) D 15.01, p < 0.001). There was a significant difference in
the mean patriotism scores between low consumers (M D 4.45) and high consumers
(M D 5.20) (t(201) D 4.38, p < 0.001). Hypothesis 2 is supported.
The third hypothesis stated that the more Olympic media a participant consumed,
the higher the participant would score on measures of internationalism. Based
on the analysis, consumption of Olympic media was a significant predictor of
internationalistic attitudes (R2 D 0.063, F(1, 201) D 13.47, p < 0.001). There was
a significant difference in the mean patriotism scores between low (M D 3.45) and
high consumers (M D 4.23) (t(201) D 4.746, p < 0.001). Hypothesis 3 is supported.
The fourth hypothesis stated that the more Olympic media a participant con-
sumed, the higher the participant would score on measures of smugness. Based on
the analysis, consumption of Olympic media was a significant predictor of smug
attitudes (R2 D 0.064, F(1, 201) D 13.79, p < 0.001). There was a significant
difference in the mean patriotism scores between low consumers (M D 4.63) and
high consumers (M D 5.37) (t(201) D 3.846, p < 0.001). Hypothesis 4 is supported.
Differences in Nationalistic Attitudes Before and After Olympic Coverage
The fifth hypothesis suggested that the level of nationalistic attitudes among
Olympic viewers would be higher immediately after the Olympics ended (Point 2)
compared to immediately before the Olympics began (Point 1). Table 3 provides
the mean scores for each of the four qualities and the scale items for each of the
three data collection points.
An independent-samples t-test was used to examine the differences in nationalistic
attitudes before and after the Olympics. Although there were no significant differ-
ences among the scores for patriotism, nationalism, and internationalism, there was
a significant difference in the mean scores for smugness (t(237) D 3.005, p D 0.003).
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Table 2
Mean Scores for Nationalistic Attitudes Based on Level of Media Consumption
Low
Consumers
High
Consumers
Patriotism Scale 5.71 6.18
1) I love my country. 6.09 6.39
2) I am proud to be from my country. 6.01 6.37
3) In a sense, I am emotionally attached to my country and
emotionally affected by its actions.
5.68 5.89
4) Although at times I may not agree with the government, my
commitment to my country always remains strong.
5.83 6.15
5) It is important to serve my country. 5.39 5.89
6) When I see my country do well in events like the Olympics,
I feel great.
5.32 6.40
Nationalism Scale 4.45 5.21
1) It is important to honor our national history and heritage. 5.91 6.28
2) My country should try to influence other nations’ values. 4.17 4.85
3) It is important that my country wins in international sporting
competitions like the Olympics.
4.28 5.55
4) My country should be more forceful in influencing other
countries when it believes it is right.
3.45 4.35
6) In events such as the Olympics, my country is more likely
than other countries to honor the rules and exhibit fair play.
4.44 5.01
Internationalism Scale 3.45 4.23
1) If necessary, we ought to be willing to lower our standard of
living to cooperate with other countries in getting an equal
standard for every person in the world.
2.64 3.47
2) The alleviation of poverty in other countries is their problem,
not ours. (RC)
4.65 4.30
3) My country should be more willing to share its wealth with
other suffering nations, even if it doesn’t necessarily
coincide with our political interests.
3.36 4.07
4) I would be willing to decrease my living standard by 10% to
increase that of persons in poorer countries of the world.
2.98 3.67
5) I enjoy the Olympics more when I see many different
countries winning medals.
3.95 4.99
6) I wish all nations had equal resources to compete in an
event such as the Olympics.
4.42 5.47
Smugness Scale 4.63 5.37
1) I would never settle in another country. 4.58 5.09
2) My country’s flag is the best in the world. 4.85 5.77
3) I think people from my country are the finest in the world. 4.58 5.12
4) My country is the best country in the world. 5.22 5.81
5) My county best represents the ‘‘Olympic ideal.’’ 4.30 5.29
6) My country represents all that is right in the Olympics. 4.28 5.16
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Table 3
Mean Scores for Nationalistic Attitudes Based on Data Collection Point
Point
1
Point
2
Point
3
Patriotism Scale 6.14 6.08 5.84
1) I love my country. 6.51 6.33 6.15
2) I am proud to be from my country. 6.45 6.26 6.12
3) In a sense, I am emotionally attached to my country and
emotionally affected by its actions.
5.93 5.96 5.59
4) Although at times I may not agree with the government, my
commitment to my country always remains strong.
6.05 6.11 5.85
5) It is important to serve my country. 5.81 5.79 5.50
6) When I see my country do well in events like the Olympics,
I feel great.
6.11 6.04 5.80
Nationalism Scale 4.89 4.88 4.87
1) It is important to honor our national history and heritage. 6.29 6.07 6.12
2) My country should try to influence other nations’ values. 4.48 4.52 4.59
3) It is important that my country wins in international sporting
competitions like the Olympics.
5.21 5.04 4.99
4) My country should be more forceful in influencing other
countries when it believes it is right.
3.86 3.99 3.92
6) In events such as the Olympics, my country is more likely
than other countries to honor the rules and exhibit fair play.
4.61 4.77 4.72
Internationalism Scale 4.02 3.93 3.88
1) If necessary, we ought to be willing to lower our standard of
living to cooperate with other countries in getting an equal
standard for every person in the world.
3.02 3.18 3.09
2) The alleviation of poverty in other countries is their
problem, not ours. (RC)
3.85 4.37 4.53
3) My country should be more willing to share its wealth with
other suffering nations, even if it doesn’t necessarily
coincide with our political interests.
3.86 3.79 3.77
4) I would be willing to decrease my living standard by 10% to
increase that of persons in poorer countries of the world.
3.71 3.33 3.43
5) I enjoy the Olympics more when I see many different
countries winning medals.
4.30 4.58 4.51
6) I wish all nations had equal resources to compete in an
event such as the Olympics.
5.05 5.05 5.01
Smugness Scale 4.67 5.18 4.92
1) I would never settle in another country. 4.30 4.98 4.76
2) My country’s flag is the best in the world. 4.97 5.37 5.33
3) I think people from my country are the finest in the world. 4.34 5.00 4.76
4) My country is the best country in the world. 5.22 5.64 5.43
5) My county best represents the ‘‘Olympic ideal.’’ 4.64 5.07 4.66
6) My country represents all that is right in the Olympics. 4.58 5.00 4.57
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Participants showed a higher level of smugness immediately after the Olympics
ended (M D 5.18) compared to immediately before the Olympics began (M D 4.67).
However, given that three of the four subcategories had no significant differences,
there is relatively little support for Hypothesis 5.
The sixth hypothesis suggested that the level of nationalistic attitudes among
Olympic viewers would be higher immediately after the Olympics ended (Point 2)
compared to one month after the Olympics ended (Point 3). There were no signif-
icant differences among the mean scores for any of the four nationalistic qualities.
Hypothesis 6 is rejected.
Impact of Media Coverage on Reflection of National Achievement
The seventh hypothesis suggested that respondents who consumed higher amounts
of Olympic media would have more accurate perceptions of the United States’
Olympic success than respondents who consumed lower amounts of Olympic
media. There were four bogus information questions that asked about Olympic
success: two questions asking about percentages of medals, and two questions
asking about place of finish on the medals chart.
Because the responses to the questions referring to percentages have normal
distributions (kurtosis and skewness of data were both between 1 and 1), both ques-
tions were analyzed by using independent-samples t-tests. The mean percentages
provided refer to the mean of the responses to the question, not the percentage of
respondents that answered the question correctly. The first question asked respon-
dents to estimate the percentage of overall medals won by United States athletes.
The United States won 11% of the total medals. Based on the analysis, there was
not a significant difference between the responses for low consumers (M D 45.37%)
and high consumers (M D 52.50%) (t(97) D 1.453, p D 0.149).
The second question asked respondents to estimate the percentage of awarded
gold medals won by United States athletes. The United States won 15% of the total
gold medals. Based on the analysis, there was a significant difference between the
responses for low consumers (M D 40.51%) and high consumers (M D 51.45%)
(t(97) D 2.288, p D 0.024).
Because the responses to the questions referring to place (ordinal data) do not have
a normal distribution, both questions were analyzed using chi-square analysis, based
on whether or not the respondent answered the question correctly. The percentages
provided refer to the percentage of participants that answered correctly, unlike the
previous analyses. The third question asked respondents to identify the place the
United States finished on the overall medals chart. The United States finished first
in the total medals chart. Based on the analysis, 59% of low consumers answered
correctly, whereas 74% of high consumers answered correctly. Chi-square analysis
revealed that there was no significant difference in the accuracy of responses based
on level of Olympic media consumption.
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Billings et al./OLYMPIC NATIONALISM 591
The fourth question asked respondents to identify the place the United States
finished on the gold medals chart. The United States finished first on the gold
medals chart. Based on the analysis, 62% of low consumers answered correctly,
whereas 78% of high consumers answered correctly. Chi-square analysis revealed
that there was no significant difference in the accuracy of responses based on level
of Olympic media consumption. Combining the results of the four bogus information
tests, Hypothesis 7 is rejected.
Discussion
The results of this study were quite revealing in a plethora of ways, yet several
findings could be best classified as critical to advancing media understandings of
nationalism. Perhaps the largest contribution of the work is the result that overall
Olympic media consumption appears to be a much stronger predictor of nation-
alistic attitudes than the temporal impact from the passage of time. Given the
relative lack of significant findings from immediately before the Olympic Games
when compared to immediately after (shown in the largely rejected Hypothesis 5),
priming effects arising from a barrage of multimedia promotion for the Games appear
to have relatively little impact on nationalism scores, a finding similar to the effects
Drunkman (2004) examined in a political landscape. Only smugness was significant
between the two points, which could potentially be explained by the fact that the
United States finished first in the medal count in terms of both overall and gold
medal totals. Given that China emerged as a major competitor in the medals race
in 2008, the United States’ showing may have been surprising to some, escalating
feelings of smugness when the United States won more medals than China.
Perhaps more interestingly, temporality did not shift these post-Olympic scores
when testing the same factors one month later. None of the factors were significantly
different after the passage of time, meaning that divergences in nationalism scores
that were found to be significantly different between high and low media use
remained relatively constant. The finding in the Netherlands (Elling, Van Hilvoorde,
& Van Den Dool, in press) that nationalism is only temporarily affected by exposure
to international sports media is contrasted with a potentially more enduring effect
in this U.S. sample. If so, the implications of a truly saturating media experience—
with 5,535 hours of coverage available to be consumed—has ramifications for the
understanding of megasporting events within a multitude of related disciplines.
From the standpoint of cultivation, Olympic media use was a predictor of elevated
scores in all four main factors: patriotism, nationalism, internationalism, and smug-
ness. Given that 89.5% of our sample reported consuming at least some Olympic
coverage, the impact becomes less one of binary (watch vs. not watch) than one
of magnitude (comparing N of hours consumed). When considering the potential
cultivating impact, the fact that the event is touted as the most-watched television
event in history lends credence to the feelings of Lupica (2008), who argues that
‘‘compared to the Olympics, even the Super Bowl comes up looking like church.’’
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Considering that Shanahan and Morgan (1999) claim that cultivation assumes that
‘‘major impacts of television materialize by means of the way it exposes people to
the same images and metaphors over and over again’’ (p. 12), the Olympics seems
to be perhaps the best of all exemplars of the impact of repeated messaging.
However, an important mitigation to note in these findings is that elevated scores
of nationalism should not necessarily be equated with something that is intrinsically
problematic. Although answering affirmatively on some scales (e.g., ‘‘The alleviation
of poverty in other countries in their problem, not ours’’) could be deemed troubling,
answering affirmatively on other scales (e.g., ‘‘I am proud to be from my country’’) is
generally affirming a degree of happiness within the individual. This is not to lessen
the concerning aspects of nationalism in all of its forms, but rather a postulation
that when nationalism is discussed strictly in a sense of utopian eradication, a great
deal of nuance and insight is lost in the process.
Cultivation impacts of Olympic media are also particularly noteworthy because
of a much more direct correlation between media frames embedded in the con-
sumption and the nationalized outcomes. To wit, most modern media attitudes are
shaped by a plethora of sources ranging from traditional media outlets to more
recent developments in social and user-generated new media. Without question,
those elements still can greatly impact attitudes surrounding the Olympics, yet
the case could be made that this impact is lessened for three reasons. First, all
Olympic contracts (U.S. and international) are among the most stringent of all
sports media. Other outlets were banned from even showing moving images of
the events, meaning that people seeking robust, comprehensive coverage of the
Olympics were likely to relegate their media choices to the networks of NBC and
its ancillary Web site, NBC.com. Second, because primetime coverage of the Games
was rendered via tape delay, some of the most fervent fans of the Olympics actively
avoided all other media for fear of learning the results before the nightly broadcast
(Diaz, 2012). Finally, the simple fact that the Olympics were constantly on the air
and streamed on the Internet left less opportunity for public discussion and other
prolonged media spin. Certainly, the Olympics were scrutinized ad nauseam within
all forms of media; yet, when compared to a serialized network drama in which one
hour is offered each week followed by the potential of 167 hours of analysis before
the next new media offering, the Olympic cocoon that many people experience is
much more isolating than virtually all other forms of media tastes.
Turning to the results of the final hypothesis, H7, there are insights to be gained
regarding the measures in which differences were significant when compared to
measures that were not. However, these results may be secondary to the raw mean
data itself, as viewer beliefs, particularly regarding the athletic success of the U.S.
athletes, were consistently and wildly higher than the actuality. While the United
States performed very well at the London Olympic Games, they won 10.8% of the
overall medals and 15.2% of all the gold medals. These facts are contrasted to the
reports from low media consumption (45% and 40%, respectively) and high media
consumption (52% and 51%, respectively) to form a troubling pattern in which the
achievements of the United States, while tremendous, are significantly inflated when
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consulting survey responses, regardless of the amount of Olympic media in which
they consumed. Many potential reasons for this inflation could be proffered, yet the
most direct correlation may be found in NBC’s programming decision to show just
five events (gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, and beach volleyball)
over 90% of the primetime minutes. Given that the U.S. excelled in these sports
(winning 22.7% of all awarded medals and 28.6% of all gold medals within this five-
event composite), a cognitive transferal may have occurred, leading some viewers
to equate these five events with being ‘‘The Olympics’’ broadly defined.
Myriad directions for future research are evident within this study as well. For
instance, one limitation of the study concerns whether consuming Olympic media
was the major factor in predicting elevated nationalism scores or whether people
with higher feelings of nationalism are naturally drawn to expressions of nationalism
such as the Olympics. The potential for self-selection into these groups should be at
the center of future investigations. Moreover, given the relative lack of difference in
scores over time, future research should test feelings of nationalism even beyond one
month beyond the completion of the Olympics. Such work would bolster or clarify
claims as to whether the effects of Olympic nationalism should be best described
as short- or long-term.
Conclusion
A great deal of scholarship surrounding Olympic content has resulted in a com-
prehensive understanding of how coverage can be skewed in regard to issues such
as gender and ethnicity (Billings & Eastman, 2003; Billings, Angelini, & Wu, 2011).
However, this study is illuminating not only because of the focus on overall impact
using survey research, but also in how it clarifies what form of identity appears to
trump all others within international events such as the Olympics: the nation in
which one resides. The study also breaks new ground in media research regarding
the division of nationalistic attitudes, as certain elements of internationalism were
quite different from those for smugness, for example. Given the magnitude of these
findings, it is clear that Americans will watch athletes of wildly different back-
grounds as long as that coverage is wrapped in red, white, and blue. Considering
the significant findings between all four factors of nationalism and the amount of
Olympic media consumed, these types of attitudes are well worth examining not
just in sports media but also within media research as a whole.
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