Good games, bad host? Using big data to measure public attention and imagery of the Olympic Games

• Published in: Cities Vol. 90; pp. 229 - 236
• Main Authors: Kassens-Noor, Eva, Vertalka, Joshua, Wilson, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01-07-2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Algorithms; Attention; Big Data; Brands; Cities; English language; Imagery; Olympic; Olympic games; Place branding; Public attention; Social media; Social networks; Twitter; Social media; Twitter; Public attention; Big data; Image; Olympic; Place branding
• ISSN: 0264-2751; 1873-6084
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.009

Mega-event boosters frequently claim increased public attention and improved host city imagery as a rationale for public investments in major events. We design a methodology and develop an algorithm to measure both, public attention and imagery. We apply the algorithm to capture over 430 million tweets and content-analyze over 21 million tweets related to the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee, and their host cities. Olympic-related attention captures ~12.5% of the global twitter discourse during the event. In the English language, Olympic cities receive a positive brand value from the Olympic Games, because positive tweets about the Games and their prior, future, and bid cities exceed negative tweets at a ratio of 4:1. The Olympics leave no long-term image-legacy on twitter to their hosts but attract significant positive attention to the future host city. In contrast, the IOC attracts more negative than positive attention on twitter.
•Tweeters, who write in English, communicate content about the Games more positively than negatively.•The International Olympic Committee has a worse brand value than the Olympics for tweeters, who write in English•We introduce a new method capable of quantifying public attention and image on a global scale with Big Data analytics