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

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dc.contributor.advisorTaylor, Gregory
dc.contributor.authorHalajian, Matthew
dc.contributor.committeememberHiller, Harry
dc.contributor.committeememberStowe, Lisa Roxanne
dc.date2024-11
dc.date.accessioned2024-05-17T16:59:37Z
dc.date.available2024-05-17T16:59:37Z
dc.date.issued2024-05-14
dc.description.abstractThis 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.
dc.identifier.citationHalajian, M. (2024). Local media and the Olympic bidding process: a political economic analysis of Calgary’s 1988 and 2026 Olympic pursuits (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1880/118778
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/46375
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisher.facultyGraduate Studies
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgary
dc.rightsUniversity 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.
dc.subjectPolitical economy of communication
dc.subjectlocal media
dc.subjectnewspaper
dc.subjectsport-media complex
dc.subjectaudience commodity
dc.subjectpublic opinion
dc.subjectOlympics
dc.subjectOlympic bids
dc.subjectCalgary
dc.subject.classificationEducation--Social Sciences
dc.titleLocal Media and the Olympic Bidding Process: A political economic analysis of Calgary’s 1988 and 2026 Olympic pursuits
dc.typemaster thesis
thesis.degree.disciplineCommunication and Media Studies
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgary
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (MA)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudentI do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.
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