The political stance of Ibero-American national teams on social media towards Qatar during the 2022 FIFA World Cup Jiří Zákravský, Fernando Gutiérrez-Chico, Carlos Pulleiro Méndez International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2025 This article investigates the role of national teams on social media and how they shape international perceptions of Qatar during the 2022 FIFA World Cup. This tournament was an essential element of Qatar's sports diplomacy that faced criticism because of corruption allegations, organisational skills, labour conditions and human rights issues, including the treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community. This study is based on a conceptual content analysis of the Twitter (now called X) and Instagram accounts of the footballers and coaches of the eight Ibero-American national teams participating in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The aim is to identify how they communicated about the State of Qatar in their social media posts. Accordingly, this article studies the posting frequency, how they address Qatar's image, and their engagement with the aforementioned criticism of the host country. The findings show that from 2173 posts collected, a total of 275 posts mentioned Qatar. Neutral messages were dominant with 268 posts, while there were only seven positive posts. In conclusion, the Ibero-American players and coaches have contributed to the normalisation of the event through sharing content and images of Qatar in a neutral, informative tone.
Government Jiří Zákravský Roles and Ideologies in the Czech Foreign Policy the Case of European Migration Crisis, 2024
Political Parties Jiří Zákravský Roles and Ideologies in the Czech Foreign Policy the Case of European Migration Crisis, 2024
Roles, Ideologies and Positions Petr Drulák, Hana N. Hlaváčková, Jiří Zákravský Roles and Ideologies in the Czech Foreign Policy the Case of European Migration Crisis, 2024
The UAE Tour, cycling stars, and Twitter: Tweeting as part of promoting the host country Jiří Zákravský Physical Culture and Sport Studies and Research, 2021 Using the example of the 2019 inaugural UAE Tour, this study demonstrates how cycling stars indirectly promote countries hosting globally watched sporting events through their Twitter accounts. This study presents a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the Twitter activity of selected cycling stars. However, this promotion is only a secondary result of their activity on social media; professional athletes use their Twitter accounts as a platform for self-presentation and to show their daily lives to fans. If the athletes are active on social media, it is almost impossible for them to avoid speaking about the host countries, indirectly evaluate them, and provide information about them to their followers. While sports celebrities’ social media profiles are a limited space for the promotion of host countries, they can also help improve the image of the countries and present them in a positive light. Of course, political leaders use countless public or sports diplomacy tools to promote their countries abroad, and online platforms are not necessarily a key element in the promotion of their international image.
Sports Diplomacy Research in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia. Emerging Field of Study? Jiří Zákravský, Michał Marcin Kobierecki, Ivan Štulajter Politics in Central Europe, 2021 Sport is a complex phenomenon that academics across many social sciences are focusing on. The interest in sports has been observable for a long time by historians, anthropologists and sociologists. Scientists in the field of international relations are no exception. A typical way sport is studied in international relations is by paying attention to sports diplomacy. The study of sports diplomacy has become a pretty popular part of the research since the second decade of the 21stcentury and it is possible to observe the dominance of the authors from the American and British universities in sports diplomacy research. Based on the Web of Science dataset, at first sight, the study of sports diplomacy is not seen as a popular field of research in the Central European countries. On the other hand, this statistical measure does not describe a complex situation of what the sports diplomacy research looks like, how it is formed or how it reflects the thinking of the politicians on national public/sports diplomacy. Thus, the article aims to map sports diplomacy research in the Central European states, specifically in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia.
Cold War on ice? Soviet ice-hockey dominance and foreign policy Magda B. Leichtová, Jiří Zákravský Sport in Society, 2021 Sport has been widely used as a tool of communication (ping-pong diplomacy), penalization (boycotts) and also safe competition during the Cold War. The allegedly apolitical Olympic Games held a prominent place in this system of de facto politicized sport, with both rivalling superpowers trying to prove their fitness through the winning of Olympic medals. In this article, we would like to compare the media coverage of the Olympic hockey contest between the USSR and the US in order to identify how the victory in the match was portrayed and whether in fact sport served as a tool of ideological confrontation between East and West. We would like to test the common narrative of sport being the proxy for a great ideological rivalry of power between the East and the West in the case of Olympic ice-hockey.
Sports diplomacy of the state of Qatar and its (lack of) success in the Czech Republic: Analysis of the Czech Nationwide Press in 2016 Islamic World in International Relations, 2019
