Qatar invests in sports, uses its soft power to stand out
WITH a funding from Qatar National Research Fund obtained by Dr Moez Ben Messaoud from Qatar University
QU , the Mass Communication Department of the College of Arts and Sciences at Qatar University recently organised a two-day international scientific conference on ‘Media, Sports and Marketing Mechanisms of Qatar 2022: Challenges and Potentials’.
The conference, which was coordinated by Dr Ben Messaoud, associate professor of Strategic Communication at the Department of Mass Communication at Qatar University, brought together a number of Arab and non-Arab intellectuals and professionals working in the media, marketing and advertising sectors to present their perceptions regarding the promotion and marketing mechanisms of the 2022 World Cup and highlight its impact on the image of Qatar and the ability to promote it as a tourist destination and a cultural capital.
Apart from being an opportunity to build communication bridges between academics and professionals in various disciplines such as media and communication, sociology, international affairs, marketing and advertising, the symposium centered on axes such as the institutionalisation of sports and media, Qatar’s experience in sports media and its role in recrystallising the concept of entertainment and the emergence of a new concept of sports media geopolitics.
The symposium discussed the importance of international sporting events in promoting the image of Qatar as a World Cup organising country and consolidating its national and regional identity rooted in its Arab and Islamic affiliation.
The recommendations will serve the World Cup 2022 communication and marketing activity.
During his presentation in the first session, Dr Jamel ran from Manouba University, Tunisia, said that sports, like communication, are social phenomena that are strongly present in all societies and are constantly transforming, which makes them a scientific topic that interferes in its multidisciplinary interpretation, noting that the ambiguity that surrounds communication and sports in research re ects the societal expansion of these two phenomena.
Dr ran stressed that today, it is difficult to explain what is athletic and what is communicative in society.
“In every human movement, the communicator and the sportsman confront us. Contact with globalisation is about to turn communication into an ideology, and with it, sport may change into an axis of communication in all its manifestations far from the prevailing portrayal of communication as nothing but a mere marketing tool for sport. The relationship between communication and sport is a structural one,” he said.
Dr Abdellatif Ben Sfiaa, director of the Higher Institute of Information and Communication in Rabat, Morocco, in a presentation titled ‘International Sports Events and Betting on the Media: Qatar 2022 and Managing Media Performance’, focused on the importance of Olympic Games, world and continental championships, and the role of the media in managing their potentials.
He pointed out that the 2022 FIFA World Cup is of an exceptional nature and that Qatar is the first Arab and Islamic country to organise a global event of this size.
In his presentation ‘Media, Sports and the Formation of National Identity, Dr Noureddine Miladi, professor of Mass Communication at Qatar University, indicated that some media and communication scholars believe that identity, in the modern nation-state, is no longer formed through traditional means only. The nation’s image is rather built through national institutions such as museums, educational systems and the media.
Dr Miladi pointed out that international sporting events represent an important opportunity to present and market national heritage and culture and celebrate them in the host countries.
Citing the 2006 Asian Games in Qatar, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as the 2012 Olympics in London, he analysed the representations of national identity and cultural symbols that were celebrated on these occasions.
He also discussed the way in which media coverage reects this range of interaction between national belonging and sport, which is frequently repeated at these international sporting events.
In a presentation titled ‘Sports and football as catalysts for building local identity and highlighting soft power: the BeIN Sport channel as a model’, Dr Sebastian Sons, a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with Orient CARPO in Germany, pointed out that in recent years, sports and football in particular have become relevant factors in building identity in member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
He said the preparation for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has accelerated efforts in those countries to establish sport as an essential tool for national development, social and cultural modernisation, and economic diversification.
The researcher has identified relevant theoretical considerations regarding sport as a soft area of policy making. Both sports and football were employed by the leaders of the Gulf States to enhance the visibility and unification of local power, as well as to enhance global and regional in uence.
According to the researcher, the relationship between the trio of sports, identity politics and the consolidation of power plays a key role in the complex and sometimes volatile regional relations between the concerned Gulf countries, noting that “motivated by social, economic and political aspirations, sport has become an area of increased competition.”
In the same context, Dr Hala Guta and Dr Eiman Issa from the Mass Communication Department of Qatar University gave a presentation titled ‘Marketing the State of Qatar’s Sports Identity on Tik-Tok: The Road Towards 2022’.
The presentation emphasised the importance of using social media and the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy to promote the identity of Qatar as a sports centre.
The Supreme Committee created an official account on Tik Tok in 2020 and called it Road to 2022. This account uses Arabic as the main language in addition to official accounts in several other languages, including English, Spanish and French.
Based on the TikTok sample, the two researchers investigated the strategies and narratives of Qatar Sports Identity marketing used by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy.
The research used content analysis to compare the publications of the Supreme Committee on the Arabic Tik Tok account which targets local and regional audiences, and the English Tik Tok account, which targets international audiences.
Dr haled Ghulam, dean of the College of Media and Arts at the University of Tripoli in Libya, in a paper titled ‘The Impact of Sports Identity on the Representations of the Mental Image of the West towards Arabs’ shed light on the importance of the role of sports in changing the West’s stereotypical view of third world countries in general and Arab countries in particular.
The presenter pointed out the need for both the media and academy to play their role in supporting and encouraging sports tournaments for their effective role in changing the Westerners’ prevailing image of Arabs.
In a presentation titled ‘The Formation of the Mental Image for Viewers of Sports Pictures’, Dr Fouad Abdel Aziz focused on the importance of sports in bringing people together and fuelling the feelings of the ‘national spirit’ that sometimes aligns with chauvinistic feelings, starting with the rituals accompanying this human activity, such as choosing the uniform of any team, mimicking in one way or another the colours of the country’s ag, and ending with the emotional identification that reaches the point of shedding tears when singing the national anthem.
In this study, the researcher used the semiotic analysis method of Roland Barthes to probe the depths of the vision and the ‘national’ meaning in the still and moving images of football.
During the second day of the international scientific symposium, Dr Abdalmotalab Saddiq Makki presented a paper titled ‘Sports Discourse and the Dilemma of Hate and Racism’.
The problematic of this topic revolved around the fact that sports are an arena for competition which calls for a commitment to honour this competition so that it does not turn into a battle of con ict, hostility and possibly fighting, as was said in many countries.
Dr Makki stressed that sports media cannot be viewed as an entertaining activity as was prevalent in the past. Today, sports have become a stand-alone industry and an important tool in diplomacy, dialogue and rapprochement between peoples.
In his presentation on the new representations of investment in sports, Dr Moez Ben Messaoud, associate professor of Strategic Communication at Qatar University, maintained that the field of sports represents one of the modern platforms that countries take to achieve political, economic, social and cultural goals, pointing to the various forms of investment such as television broadcasting, advertisements, sponsorship rights and the transfer market for players.
The coordinator of the symposium also hosted Ahmed Ghassab Al Hajri from Qatar Media Corporation and journalist Amer Al Titawi.