International public opinion analysis of four olympic games: From 2008 to 2022

Abstract

Since the rapid spread of the COVID-19 worldwide, the pandemic has led to a huge impact on global sporting events. As a major international event, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has commonalities with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in terms of international public opinion context and epidemiological background. In this study, over 1 million pieces of UGC(User Generated Contents) in Chinese and English languages were obtained from social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, as well as traditional mass media in various countries to compare the differences between the two languages in international public opinion. Using sentiment analysis, this study explores the evolution of international public opinion topics and sentiment differences among the above four Olympic Games. The analysis results show that:1) regardless of traditional mass media or online social media, there is a more obvious tendency of general politicization in the topics of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and extreme emotional remarks of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are more frequent; 2) in the topic of political opinion involving China, international Chinese public opinion presents more negative sentiment than those in English; 3) Among the topics involving COVID-19, the negative level of public opinion in Chinese and English is opposite for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics;4) International public opinion on the topic of sports events is significantly more positive in Chinese than in English;5) YouTube’s Chinese opinion environment is better than English.