Cold War Politics and Sports : Ice Hockey Competitions and the Image of the USSR in Western Mass Media

Abstract: The notion that politics and sport should not be mixed together have been a common notion throughout the 20th century. Nevertheless, the fact that sport is political has continuously been revealed and apparent, in particular during the period of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Summit Series in 1972 and the Miracle on Ice in 1980 were two ice hockey events that characterised the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West. However, rather than referring to the characterisation of the two events, it is of value to examine how the two sport events were reflected in Western mass media. Thus, this thesis, through the usage of mediatization theory in a critical discourse analysis of archival materials of Dagens Nyheter and New York Times, focuses on how international sport events outcomes of the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, were reflected in Western media. My thesis addresses this research question within the context of the Cold War led by the USA and the Soviet Union. Therefore, it is crucial to analyse this question within the intersection of national-and-international factors that condition this competition in all aspects, including in sports. It is demonstrated that the reflected image of the Soviet Union differed between the media outlets; moreover, it is illustrated that the coverage of the events was, to a certain extent, characterised and influenced by either political sentiments or countries political status, depending on the geographic location of the newspaper.