TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 01 March 2023 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 “Our City Will Be the First to Hold OPEN ACCESS Both Summer and Winter Olympics”: A comparative analysis EDITED BY Bin Yang, Jiangnan University, China REVIEWED BY of how media coverage and public Valentina Marinescu, University of Bucharest, Romania opinion were framed on social Jingrui An, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands media in the lead up to the Beijing *CORRESPONDENCE Zesheng Yang 2022 winter Olympic games zesheng.yang@autonoma.cat SPECIALTY SECTION Zesheng Yang 1*, Yang Ruan 2 and Jianing Zhang 3 This article was submitted to 1 Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Human-Media Interaction, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Independent Researcher, Zhengzhou, China, 3 Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism a section of the journal Management, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China Frontiers in Psychology RECEIVED 16December 2022 ACCEPTED 30 January 2023 Introduction: Beijing is the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympic PUBLISHED 01 March 2023 Games. Mega sporting events such as the Olympic Games, which attract mass CITATION audiences, benefit greatly from social media. This article examines how the news Yang Z, Ruan Y and Zhang J (2023) “Our City Will Be the First to Hold Both Summer and coverage and public opinion about the Beijing 2022 were articulated on social media Winter Olympics”: A comparative analysis of in the lead up to the Beijing 2022. how media coverage and public opinion were framed on social media in the lead up to the Method: We employed computational content analysis to examine 9,439 individual Beijing 2022 winter Olympic games. posts and 450 official media posts that appeared before the Beijing 2022 Olympics. Front. Psychol. 14:1125522. We also used ROSTCM6 to investigate the sentiment of official media and public doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 opinion toward Beijing 2022. COPYRIGHT © 2023 Yang, Ruan and Zhang. This is an Results: The results of this study reveal that members of public are more inclined open-access article distributed under the terms to highlight certain aspects of Beijing 2022 based on their individual perspectives. of the Creative Commons Attribution License Official media, whose work generally aligns with the government’s interests. Through (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the a sentiment analysis of these posts, we found strongly positive attitudes concerning original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) Beijing 2022 among the Chinese public and the media. are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with Discussion: Our results provide ample evidence of an overall relative convergence of accepted academic practice. No use, positions between public opinion and news coverage about the Beijing 2022, despite distribution or reproduction is permitted which their divergences. This study indicates that social media presents itself as a space for does not comply with these terms. broader public statements, and empowers ordinary people to discuss China’s social issues of concern. Meanwhile, official media represents the government’s position, strategically framing Beijing 2022 as a landmark event in the new era of China. KEYWORDS Beijing 2022 winter Olympic games, media coverage, public opinion, sentiment analysis, social media Introduction By combining narratives involving both public issues and people’s private lives (Moreau et al., 2021), social media have opened up opportunities for individuals to engage with public and social issues (van Laer and van Aelst, 2010; Lee and Kwak, 2012). Through such narratives, people frame and reframe these debates (Meraz and Papacharissi, 2013). Social media not only disseminate Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 individuals’ posts and perceptions; they also provide a platform for causes and possible outcomes of a given issue, make moral judgements media organizations. Over the past decade, most traditional media and cover the topic accordingly. Framing theory shows how outlets have expanded their influence through social media, ensuring highlighting and selecting specific aspects of an issue can augment that they have a strong online presence alongside their print publications framing effects, thereby making these aspects more prominent in a (Obrien, 2011; Hong, 2012; Hiers, 2014). communication environment (Chong and Druckman, 2007; Mega sporting events such as the Olympic Games, which attract Entman, 2007). mass audiences, benefit greatly from social media (Tang and Cooper, A number of sports communication researchers have used framing 2018). The 2016 Rio Olympic Games were called the ‘most social theory to study how mass media and social media understand the Olympics’ (Lui, 2016). With social media platforms becoming closely Winter Olympic Games. Billings and Eastman (2003) examined how linked to the Olympics, the Olympic Games have entered an era known identities were framed in broadcasters’ announcements of the 2002 as ‘Socialympics’ (Liu, 2016). Researchers have argued that the use of Winter Olympics. Misener (2013) analyzed how the legacy of the 2010 social media during the Olympic Games has redefined the public Vancouver Winter Paralympic Games was framed in the media. Oh domain or once again highlighted the value of sharing information et al. (2020) investigated the media framing of the unified Korean online, with a lasting impact on society (AkhtPar, 2016; Girginova, Olympic women’s ice hockey team in newspaper coverage and social 2016). In addition to promoting the Summer Olympics, digital media commentary. What is more, scholars have examined the framing technology and social media have been instrumental in establishing the of the Olympics with regard to social and political issues (Seippel et al., Winter Olympics as a global mega sporting event too (Ramon 2016; Pan and Lawal, 2017) such as environmental degradation (Yoon et al., 2020). and Wilson, 2019), public protest (van Luijk and Frisby, 2012). During the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics, at least five proposed cities backed out following voter referendums or public polls. Only Beijing, China, and Almaty, Kazakhstan were the only Mega sporting events in China remaining candidate cities. Although voter referendums and public polls are not popular in China, in China’s media ecology, social media In China, mega sporting events have long been seen as an important is considered to effectively reflect public opinion, while mainstream way of strengthening national identity, stirring up patriotism among its media is treated as the official mouthpiece (Stockmann and Luo, 2017; citizens, enhancing its international standing, and projecting an image Li et al., 2019). Research on media reporting and social media content of unity and modernity abroad (Chen, 2012; Chu, 2018). After the 2008 relating to sports is particularly valuable. As scholars noted that work Beijing Olympic Games, which successfully altered China’s international comparing sports coverage in traditional media with discussions of image (Chung and Woo, 2011), China has continuously hosted the sports on social media is important because it allows researchers to Asian Games, Summer Universiade, and Youth Olympic Games. The identify crucial differences in how the two forms of media report Chinese government’s next goal is to host a successful Winter Olympics. sporting events (Billings et al., 2015). Today, however, communications Since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, the games have grown generated by the news media and general public coexist on interactive exponentially, becoming one of the most influential competitions in online platforms (Neubaum and Krämer, 2017). Treating ‘social the world (Chappelet, 2002). In November 2013, the Chinese Olympic media’ as a homogenous whole, encompassing both personal and Committee formally nominated Beijing as a bidding city for the 2022 news media content, cannot fully represent the reality of sports Winter Olympics. In 2015, after 2 years of preparation, Beijing was coverage. It is therefore necessary to further distinguish how media selected to host the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, becoming the first coverage and public opinion frame the mega sporting event on social city to put on both the Summer and Winter Games. The Chinese media, and to compare specific topics presented by media outlets and government attaches great importance to the preparations for Beijing public opinion. What is more, few researchers have studied how 2022. In March 2019, the State Council and Central Committee of the media frame and publics discuss mega sporting events before the General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued a competitions. Accordingly, this study compares the frames implicit in report, ‘Opinions on Developing Snow and Ice Sport as an the media coverage of and public opinion concerning Beijing 2022 on Opportunity for Beijing 2022’ (Xinhua News Agency, 2019), which Chinese social media during the one-year-long countdown to the further emphasized the significance of the event. Additionally, Xi event, as well as the sentiments expressed in relevant social Jinping has given the Beijing Winter Olympics a distinctly personal media posts. touch. According to media reports, Xi is an avid sports fan and enjoys winter sports in particular (Danson, 2019; Huaxia, 2020). The 2022 Winter Olympics therefore promises to be among the landmark Literature review events of his presidency. Framing theory Using Weibo data to study media coverage A popular approach in political and communication studies, and public opinion framing theory attends to media’s capacity to influence how a given audience understands an issue. Goffman (1974) initially put framing Launched by Sina Corporation in August 2009, Weibo is the only theory forward in his book Frame Analysis, in which he suggests that vibrant micro-blogging platform in China, with more than 553 million framing occurs when an individual stresses a certain relevant aspect to users in the first quarter of 2021 (Guancha Syndicate, 2021). Although define a situation. Entman (1993) carries this forward into an analysis Weibo began as a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, it has since of media framing, arguing that news agencies discover the potential incorporated several features that resemble Facebook. Weibo offers Frontiers in Psychology 02 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 great visibility and extensive news coverage. Accordingly, it is the most networks (Wan, 2019) and latent Dirichlet models (Yonggan et al., influential platform in China for discussing popular news and public 2016). Weibo posts have also been used to examine public sentiments issues (Huang and Sun, 2014; Rauchfleisch and Schäfer, 2015). regarding public affairs such as Hong Kong’s ‘Occupy Central’ Given the growing importance of social media in media coverage movement (Luo and Zhai, 2017); stock market fluctuations (Chen et al., and the formation of public opinion, in 2014 the CPC leadership 2016); how incidents are monitored following disasters (Bai and Yu, released a memorandum promoting media convergence and the 2016); and debates over traditional Chinese medicine (Shen et al., digitalization of mainstream media. It should be pointed out that in 2015). Few studies, however, analyze the sentiments surrounding mega China mainstream news organizations are certified by the government, sporting events. In view of this, we examine the sentiments expressed for they are crucial for consolidating the CPC’s political power (Daniela concerning Beijing 2022 in the pre-Olympic period. and Mary, 2011; Qin et al., 2018). After 2014, mainstream media began establishing a large number of Weibo accounts to publish news and attract readers. According to the ‘Weibo User Development Report’ of Method 2020, it had 38,000 verified mainstream media accounts by the end of the year (Weibo, 2021). In the light of the mainstream media’s great Data collection influence on Weibo, we set out to establish which frames were prominent in mainstream news media coverage of Beijing 2022 on To understand the frames embedded in news media and public Weibo during the pre-Olympic period. posts, we collected content posted on Weibo in the year leading up to In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the opening of Beijing 2022. Given that the one-year countdown to the using social media as a meter of public opinion. Despite there being games began on 4 February 2021, we gathered data between 4 January some drawbacks to deriving public opinion from social media, many and 28 February 2021. Many milestone events and celebrations were researchers have demonstrated that social media data are a strong held to usher in Beijing 2022 in and around these 2 months. For instance, indicator of how publics perceived certain issues (Anstead and Beijing 2022 sports pictograms were released; the games’ competition O’Loughlin, 2015; Choi and Lee, 2017; Neubaum and Krämer, 2017). venues were all completed and unveiled; the torch was released at a Some scholars have extracted Weibo data to explore public opinion in celebration marking the beginning of the one-year countdown; and test China. Despite the existence of censorship and deletion measures on events for domestic athletes was held. These events received extensive Chinese social media (Rauchfleisch and Schäfer, 2015), they argue, the media coverage and public attention, producing an abundance of social Chinese government allows online debate on public affairs, permitting media data. users to respond to government policies as long as online debates do We employed a web crawler to collect posts on Weibo. Specifically, not catalyze collective action (King et al., 2017). In comparing several data was collected in the following steps. First, to identify posts, Chinese social media, Stockmann and Luo (2017) concluded that we conducted searches in Chinese for the keywords ‘Beijing 2022 Winter Weibo may have the greatest potential to facilitate online discourse on Olympic Games’ (北京2022年冬奥会) and ‘Beijing Winter Olympic a particular topic. Another group of researchers (Li et al., 2019) Games’ (北京冬奥会). The posts’ content, account name, release time, analyzed Weibo data to summarize public opinion regarding public account type, and other publicly visible information were collected. transportation problems in China and proposed improvement Second, to accurately represent the public discourse, posts from measures. Still another (Han et al., 2020) examined Chinese public government agencies, enterprises, news media, and other organizational opinion during the first stages of COVID-19, finding that Weibo texts users were excluded. 9,439 posts from individual accounts were retained were an accurate and feasible means through which to do so. Very few as the sample. Third, we conducted searches on Weibo for news media studies have used Weibo data to study public opinions about mega accounts that met the following three criteria: Chinese central sporting events, however. Accordingly, alongside our framing analysis government-controlled media; mainstream media in Beijing, the games’ of mainstream media, we aim to identify prominent frames in public host city; and Chinese professional sports media. Our list was filtered discussions of Beijing 2022 on Weibo during the run-up to and supplemented by ten professional sport journalists with at least the Olympics. 5 years’ experience in China. Finally, we chose 23 influential news media accounts from which to collect content, and reused the keywords used in the first step to gather relevant content.1 This process eventually Sentiment analysis produced a sample of 450 Weibo posts. Sentiment analysis (which attends to people’s perspectives, evaluations, attitudes, and emotions) is among the most active areas of research in natural language processing. Having expanded beyond computer science to the social sciences, this research method is now 1 The news media accounts are: 人民日报 (People’s Daily), 新华社 (Xinhua News essential to understanding public opinion. Social media has made it Agency)，人民日报体育 (People’s Daily-Sport)，新华体育 (Xinhua News-Sport)，央 possible for millions of people to share their emotions and attitudes on 视体育 (CCTV-Sport)，人民体育 (People’s -Sport)，新华网 (Xinhua Net)，中央人 online social networks, leading to an explosion in the volume of 民广播电台 (China National Radio)，央视新闻 (CCTV-News)，BTV冬奥纪实 (BTV relevant data. Using sentiment analysis to examine these data allows Documentary)，环球时报 (Global Times)，北京日报 (Beijing Daily)，河北日报 researchers to learn about public attitudes and social trends (Di (Hebei Daily)，河北广播电视台 (Hebei Radio and TV Station)，中国新闻网 (China et al., 2014). News)，体坛周报 (Titan Sport)，中国青年报 (China Youth Daily)，中国体育报 Analyzing sentiments on Weibo has become increasingly important (China Sport Daily)，澎湃新闻 (The Paper)，光明日报 (Guangming Daily)，科技 in academic study. A number of scholars have developed research 日报 (Science and Technology Daily)，南方都市报 (Southern Metropolis Daily), methods to examine sentiments in Weibo, including using deep neural and 北京晚报 (Beijing Evening). Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 TABLE 1 List of extracted frames and keywords of individual accounts. Frame Topic n (%) High frequency words Entertainment 0 642(6.80%) Zhou Shen, Li Qin, ambassador, participation, send blessings Stars 1 1,534(16.25%) Xiao Zhan, You Changjing, Cool Guy, CCTV gala, new song 2 583(6.18%) Chen Linong, Yang Mi, Yang Zi, Meng Meiqi, culture 3 881(9.33%) Wang Jiaer, Yaochen, artist, sing, youth Public attitude 4 1,291(13.68%) encouragement, highlight, history, complete success 5 718(7.60%) joyous festival, happy get-together, power, anniversary, worldwide 6 811(8.59%) dream, cheer, congratulation, nation, blessing Preparation work 7 939(9.95%) Mascot, icon, ski jumping, snow, construction 8 732(7.76%) Zhang Jiakou, volunteer, high-speed train, ice-making 9 786(8.32%) Shou Gang, winter dream, ski resort, build, test Olympic partners 10 522(5.53%) Olympic, partner, China Unicom, Tsingtao, Sankeshu Data analysis their patterns in the Chinese language. The application assigns polarity scores for each text body as positive, negative, or neutral by comparing Topic modelling derived patterns and pre-examined text structures. Whereas positive To investigate the topics appearing in public discussions and news sentiments include attitudes of support, consensus, or trust, negative reports, we conducted topic modelling: a computational, unsupervised sentiments express opposition or rejection (Kiritchenko et al., 2014). If a method of effectively extracting patterns of meaning from large numbers of document contains more positive scores than negative and neutral scores, unstructured posts (Blei, 2012). It is often used to identify not only topics it is deemed as positive, and vice versa (Tan and Zhang, 2008). In and frames, but also agendas in large social media datasets (Guo et al., 2016; ROSTCM6, neutral sentiment is expressed as 0. It serves as the dividing line Walter and Ophir, 2019; Li et al., 2020). Put simply, topic modelling enables between positive and negative sentiments, which are expressed as numbers users to organize and summarize large volumes of documents that would above and below 0, respectively. Positive and negative sentiments were be impossible to annotate manually. Before analysis, we cleaned up the data graded on a scale of 10 from low, through moderate, to high (Figure 1). by following standard pre-processing steps developed in previous studies (removing all stop words, punctuation marks, numbers, and non-lexical characters). Later, we segmented the text into words using the Jieba package Results in Python. Adopting the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) as a topic- modelling algorithm, we used it to cluster words from personal documents Frames in public opinion into different topics. Based on the probability of keyword co-occurrence, each topic was fed through an extracted cluster of keywords (Wang et al., Four frames emerged from the public opinion expressed concerning 2021). Considering both the relatively low value of perplexity and dearth of Beijing 2022. The first frame, which was articulated in most of the posts topics, we identified 10 topics for individual accounts and 14 topics for (n = 3,640, 38.56%) we analyzed, referred to Beijing 2022 promotional media accounts after several attempts at completing this step of the process. activities involving entertainment stars. Many pop stars attended the numerous events held to celebrate there being just 1 year left to the games. Manual coding of frames The countdown coincided with the Chinese Lunar New Year, the most We then read all the topics and high-frequency words. By evaluating important traditional festival in China. Several singers performed Olympic- the extent to which the topics were exclusive of one another and merging themed songs on China’s most-watched television program, China Central the similar topics, we manually coded the ten extracted topics for Television (CCTV) Spring Festival Gala. The show garnered huge individual accounts into four frames (as shown in Table 1): popularity, as one of the individual Weibo posts we analyzed makes clear: entertainment stars, public attitude, preparation work, and Olympic partners. Using the same approach, we clustered the 14 topics for media Yang Mi, Jin Chen, and Li Qin are really good-looking people! organization’s accounts into four frames: preparatory work, political Actors @Jin Chen participated for the first time in the 2021 CCTV issues, COVID-19 pandemic, and media attitudes (Table 2). This step is Spring Festival Gala. Elegant and moving, her voice is gripping, with in line with the proposition that LDA-generated topics can be regrouped a song entitled ‘Burning Snowflake’, for all the athletes cheering for or recoded into meaningful, condensed frames based on conceptual 2022 Beijing! similarities (Nelson, 2020), which has been widely applied in the previous literature (Maier et al., 2018; Li et al., 2020). The second frame expressed by the public (n = 2,820, 29.87%) is attitude towards Beijing 2022. Most Chinese ‘netizens’ eagerly Sentiment analysis anticipated that games, using words such as ‘encouragement’, Sentiment analysis is a fundamental text-analysis technique. It works by ‘reunion’, ‘dreams’, ‘celebration’, and ‘complete success’ to express classifying the polarity of a text and identifying positive and negative their enthusiasm. One post reads: ‘Looking forward to Beijing sentiments (Wilson et al., 2005). For this study, we adopted the Rost Content 2022, for dreams and faith! Fight for honor, cheer for yourself ! Mining 6 (ROSTCM6) system, which captures sentimental expressions and We await Beijing 2022 together!’ Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 TABLE 2 List of extracted frames and keywords in news media. Frame Topic n (%) High frequency words Preparation Work 0 19(4.22%) one-year countdown, qualification, athlete, ice-making, efficient 1 35(7.78%) Bing Dwen Dwen, Shougang, work progress, Bach, ice stadium 2 46(10.22%) competition, technology, Chongli, ice ribbon, torch 3 38(8.44%) construction, sprint, enthusiasm, all-out, domestic Political issues 4 56(12.44%) extreme sport, biathlon, challenge, attention, economic 5 30(6.67%) city of twice Olympics, general secretary, capital, Hebei, encouragement 6 32(7.11%) president, nation, Beijing 2022, ensure, do well 7 31(6.89%) Xi Jinping, perfect, Winter Olympic Games, champion, environmental protection 8 15(3.33%) regulation, professional, request, important speech, promotion COVID-19 9 21(4.67%) CEEC, IOC, communication, coordination, development 10 25(5.56%) epidemic, unity, preparation, join hands, investigate, 11 24(5.33%) COVID-19, Japan, Tokyo, collaborate, close to, hope Media attitude 12 21(4.67%) vaccine, solutions, orderly, criterion, civilisation 13 24(5.33%) strong, powerful country, innovation, citizen, speed 14 33(7.33%) confidence, successfully, cohesion, spirit, whole society Some individual users, however, expressed critical views of Beijing The second frame (n = 129, 28.67%) that emerged from the data was 2022. In their opinion, winter sports are not popular in China, especially political issues. In this frame, words such as ‘Xi Jinping’, ‘president’, in the south, and ensuring that the entire nation benefits from Beijing ‘General Secretary’, ‘regulations’, ‘Central and Eastern Europe’, and 2022 will be a challenge. A few users argued that China no longer ‘coordination’, were used to highlight the importance of the Chinese needed to hold sporting events to demonstrate national strength and government and its diplomatic activities in relation to Beijing 2022. enhance its status; it would be better to spend those funds on improving During the key stage of the preparations for Beijing 2022—between 18 people’s livelihoods instead. and 20 January 2021—Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC, visited The third frame consisted of public discussions (n = 2,457, 26.03%) competition venues in Beijing and Hebei. The purpose of his visit was about the preparatory work for Beijing 2022. The public mostly focused to assess how preparations were going. This news was extensively on the milestones leading up to Beijing 2022 that were relevant to them reported. Consider the following Weibo post: personally, such as the recruitment of volunteers and opening of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line. For instance, in one post a From January 18 to 19, CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected the user wrote: ‘I want to be a volunteer for Beijing 2022. I hope my dream three competition areas in Beijing and Hebei to cheer for Beijing 2022. comes true, wish me luck’. Xi’s concern for Beijing 2022 reveals his profound thinking and overall Finally, many users (n = 522, 5.53%) also discussed the Olympic strategic planning for a strong sporting nation and a healthy China. partners of Beijing 2022. For many companies, social media have become an important platform on which to promote their products and enhance The third frame (n = 70, 15.56%) was COVID-19; relevant words their brand value (Ashley and Tracy, 2015). Olympic partners took included ‘coronavirus’, ‘pandemic’, and ‘vaccine’. This frame encompassed advantage of the beginning of the 1-year countdown to Beijing 2022 to three kinds of content. The first is content related to how Beijing 2022 launch marketing campaigns that attracted the attention of many consumers. was being prepared during a pandemic. Additionally, the media reported on the National Health Commission’s response to the measures being implemented to control the pandemic in the context of Beijing 2022. The Frames in news media cooperation between China and international organizations (especially the International Olympic Committee) in fighting the virus also Four frames were extracted from the 14 news media topics: preparation attracted the media’s attention. The president of the International work, political issues, COVID-19, and media attitudes. The first frame Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said that ‘China has performed well (n = 194, 43.11%) was preparation work for Beijing 2022. Although this in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the International frame was present in posts by individual accounts too, they expressed Olympic Committee is full of confidence in the success of Beijing 2022’. different concerns about the events in question. Media outlets focused on The fourth frame (n = 57, 12.66%) was media attitudes. The news Beijing 2022 milestone events and the construction of basic facilities, as media’s attitudes towards Beijing 2022 are most prominently articulated represented in the following quote: ‘Tonight, the torch of Beijing 2022– through editorials, which are particularly expansive in terms of ‘Flying’ was officially released. Its overall design echoes that of the torch expression. The media revealed its attitude by using phrases such as ‘a tower at the opening of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games’. powerful country’, ‘smooth development’, ‘the whole world’, and ‘full of Moreover, words such as ‘sprint’, ‘enthusiasm’, and ‘go all out’ confidence’. As the literature points out, Chinese media is largely a frequently appeared in this frame, reflecting the media’s confidence in mouthpiece of the government. It is therefore logical that their coverage the success of Beijing 2022. is consistent with the government’s stance on major issues. Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 FIGURE 1 The flow of data processing. In summary, a comparison of the frames that emerged from The negative sentiments expressed in the news media had to do individual users and news media accounts revealed that both groups with some winter sports being postponed or cancelled. Some of these discussed the preparations for Beijing 2022 and milestones that led to competitions were warm-up matches to be held ahead of Beijing 2022 the opening of the games. Among individual accounts, Weibo users or qualifying competitions for the Winter Olympics. The postponement were more inclined to discuss content related to entertainment stars. In of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games also raised concerns about whether contrast, entertainment stars rarely appeared in the news media. The Beijing 2022 could be conducted on schedule. The negative sentiments vast majority of media reports focused on preparation work and expressed by the public had more diverse sources. Some negative political content, topics that were not significant in personal accounts. statements suggested that Beijing 2022 may not positively impact people’s lives and could disrupt the natural environment. Individual users also responded negatively to calls to boycott Beijing 2022 in some Sentiment analysis Western countries. In undertaking a sentiment analysis of 9,439 personal and 450 news organization Weibo posts, we found that the majority of posts in both Discussion categories expressed positive sentiments. Whereas 70.20% of personal accounts were positive, the figure is 84.66% for media accounts. The Media coverage frames vs. public opinion emotions articulated in media accounts (which represent official frames ideologies) were more positive, as compared with personal accounts (Table 3). This research on how Beijing 2022 was framed in media and public The positive sentiments found in personal accounts arose from the opinion on Weibo has produced findings that enhance our fact that a large number of fans expressed support for the popular idols understanding of the Chinese people and media’s opinions of mega who participated in promotion campaigns for Beijing 2022. The news sporting events. Interestingly, our results revealed that public discussion media’s high degree of positivity was indicated by its coverage of how regarding Beijing 2022 differs significantly from how it was covered in national leaders’ approved the preparations for Beijing 2022. the media. The extent to which the news media set the agenda for Additionally, news about Chinese athletes’ hard work and preparations public opinion seems to be waning. for the games also accounted for a large proportion of positive Entertainment stars have become the most prominent topic of statements. Of the three sentiments, neutrality was the least prominent. discussion among personal accounts. A number of well-known Chinese Whether in public posts or new media, this emotion was primarily entertainment stars – including Xiao Zhan, Wang Jiaer, Yang Mi, Yang Zi, expressed in factually supported statements. and Meng Meiqi – were mentioned many times. Promotional campaigns Frontiers in Psychology 06 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1125522 TABLE 3 Sentiments of the public and media concerning Beijing 2022. Positive (%) Neutral (%) Negative (%) Total Low Moderate High Low Moderate High Public 2,755(29.19) 1907(20.20) 1964(20.81) 1,627(17.24) 594(6.29) 189 (2.00) 403 (4.27) 9,439 Media 127(28.22) 73(16.22) 181(40.22) 43(9.56) 15(3.33) 8(1.78) 3(0.67) 450 mounted by these pop stars, such as the Spring Festival Gala and the release public affairs, including the waste of public funds, damage to the of Winter Olympic songs, also received great attention from admirers. This environment, and the spread of COVID-19. study also corroborates Figuera and Nieto (2018) findings, which suggest that content related to entertainers and fans accounted for a large percentage of social media engagement during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics. Conclusion The most discussed topics on news media were political issues. This finding makes sense because the Chinese media, as the mouthpiece of the Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and many cities’ CPC, is a tool of regime legitimization and effective rule (Daniela and Mary, reluctance to bid for the Olympics, Weibo data concerning Beijing 2022 2011; Qin et al., 2018). When it came to political issues, the terms ‘Xi Jin has generated numerous significant frames. Our results provide ample Ping’, ‘General Secretary’, and ‘Chairman’ were used frequently. Xi Jinping evidence of an overall relative convergence of positions between public regards Beijing 2022 as a landmark event, which endows Beijing 2022 with opinion and news coverage about the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games, his personal characteristics. This is in line with his media image as an avid despite their divergences. This study indicates that social media sport enthusiast (Danson, 2019; Huaxia, 2020). Words such as ‘strong’, presents itself as a space for broader public statements, and empowers ‘powerful’, ‘people’, and ‘full of confidence’ were frequently mentioned ordinary people to discuss China’s social issues of concern. Meanwhile, among media outlets. Our results confirm those of previous studies to the news media represents the government’s position, strategically framing effect that China uses international sporting events to enhance its national Beijing 2022 as a landmark event aimed to increase the rule of the identity and establish its authority (Chen, 2012; Chu, 2018). The COVID-19 CPC. This indicates the influence of China’s political ideology and pandemic is another focus of attention in the media accounts. The word media ecology. ‘vaccines’ appear frequently in media reports, indicating that China has This study also has a few limitations. Firstly, public opinions adopted an effective plan to combat the pandemic and ensure that Beijing expressed on social media could be contaminated by bot accounts and 2022 proceeds smoothly. hired internet commentators (King et al., 2017). Identifying and Although we found that the public and the media’s positions were eliminating these distorting factors requires rigorous and relatively consonant when it came the preparation work, the specific sophisticated data-cleaning processes. Secondly, we only collected issues of concern are different. Individual accounts tend to focus more data relating to the year leading up to Beijing 2022. We cannot on personal events, such as volunteer recruitment activities. The official examine the dynamic relationship of official media and individual media continued the consistent grand narrative for mega-event, media over a longer period of time, and how official media responds covering topics such as test games, the production of ice and snow in to negative sentiment in individual media. Future research might venues, and infrastructure construction, but lack of coverage of how investigate how the Chinese public and media perceived Beijing 2022 Beijing 2022 affects individuals. Such a reporting strategy formed a over a longer duration. separation between official propaganda and public opinion on the affairs of the Beijing 2022. It is difficult for ordinary people to resonate with official reports. Additionally, the finding of personal accounts Data availability statement critical of the Beijing 2022 echoed previous research (Rauchfleisch and Schäfer, 2015; King et al., 2017), providing further evidence that the The original contributions presented in the study are included in Chinese government allows public criticism on certain issues on social the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to media, such as sports. the corresponding author. Sentiment for Beijing 2022 Author contributions This study reveals sentiments concerning Beijing 2022 among ZY contributes to data collection, data analysis, and writing the individuals and news media. The Chinese public and media have original manuscript. YR helps to review and check the final revision. JZ generally expressed positive attitudes towards the event. The results contributes to editing the format of the manuscript. All authors indicate that Chinese people are still very enthusiastic about mega contributed to the article and approved the submitted version. sporting events and hope to perpetuate the fame of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The support for Beijing 2022 in China contrasts with the opposition to mega sporting events in other countries. Some Western Conflict of interest cities even withdrew their bids to host the Olympic Games following strong public opposition (Kassens-Noor and Lauermann, 2018; The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence Paulsson and Alm, 2020). That said, it is important to acknowledge the of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as negative sentiments expressed in the data. These concerned a range of a potential conflict of interest. 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