Reframing the destination narrative through a sport mega-event: Tracing social media's effect from 2022 FIFA (Men's) World Cup on Qatar's placebrand

Abstract

The heightened international media coverage associated with the hosting of sport mega-events can be a double-edged sword, especially for emerging countries seeking to gain global visibility and image enhancement while being placed under intense external scrutiny. With social media's rise in the consumption of sport, this chapter presents a case study of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar to illustrate how the communications concept of 'framing' can be applied to tracing underlying narratives within social media coverage (specifically X, formely Twitter) of a sport mega-event. Through comparison with studies on the 2010 and 2014 FIFA (Men's) World Cups in South Africa and Brazil, which utilized mainstream media news sources, the research underscores social media's weakening of the established agenda-setting pathways used by traditional media to determine the narrative; and reinforces the necessity for it to be included in future studies.