Athlete Activism, Human Rights, and the 2020 Olympic Games: A Twitter Analysis of Raven Saunders' Activism

Abstract

The study considers Raven Saunders' protest at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (creating an X with raised arms on the podium of the medal award ceremony as a symbol of support for oppressed people, hereby violating the International Olympic Committee's [IOC's] Rule 50.2 Guidelines) and assesses Twitter users' reactions. The authors used a single case study approach and applied the general inductive approach to analyze 3,460 tweets. About 28.7% (15.2%) of users responded positively (negatively) to the athlete's activism. Discrete emotions often accompanied beliefs that relied on dispositional (but not situational) motive attributions, leading to favorable or unfavorable attitudes. About 48.1% made neutral posts. Important to event management, the IOC as the regulator of athlete's freedom of speech was mostly perceived critically (i. e., the IOC should 1) listen rather than speak, 2) prioritize better, 3) increase their competency, and 4) the IOC's investigation is wrong), while some users demanded further investigation.