Encoding the Olympics: The Beijing Olympic Games and the Communication Impact Worldwide

Encoding the Olympics, with a uniquely representative international team of media experts, comprehensively reviews issues of media and cultural communication associated with the Beijing 2008 Olympics' international impact. Commissioned by the IOC, this pioneering comparative study - the largest in Olympic Games research - provides a ground-breaking panoramic cross-cultural perspective on media responses to all three stages of the foremost sports event of the modern world. This representative team includes media commentators, sport and media journalists, political analysts, sinologists and general commentators on China, observers of the Asian Pacific Rim as well as academics in Olympic Studies media and communication studies, cultural and sociology studies of sport and administrators of festival and events management. It is thus a unique encyclopaedic study. Encoding the Olympicstherefore is a versatile resource at several levels - as a textbook or source reference for academic institutions, for media public relations agencies that facilitate the work of inter-cultural exchange organisations and international communication departments of multinational enterprises and international NGOs. This book is a study of global media responses to a mega-sport event never attempted on this scale before. This is its global attraction. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Hisotry of Sport.