(Re)Framing of protest at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the organization of the Olympic Games has had a negative impact on the civil liberties of host communities, including the suppression of the right to peaceful protest (Lenskyj 2002: The best Olympics ever? Social impacts of Sydney 2000. Albany: State University of New York Press). The purpose of this research was to examine how individuals participating in anti-Olympic events (re)framed the right to public protest during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. The theoretical framework drew on the concepts of institutional logics and framing processes from the organizational studies and the social movement theory literatures (McAdam and Scott 2005: Organizations and movements. In: G.F. Davis, D. McAdam, W.R. Scott, and M.N. Zald, eds. Social movements and organization theory. Cambridge University Press, 4–40). The first step involved a document analysis to determine how Olympic organizers were officially framing the right to public protest. The findings revealed they were operating under three major logics of Olympism, security and sport and nationalism, which framed protestors in ways to limit their influence. In addition, one-on-one interviews were conducted with Olympic protestors along with an analysis of their related documents. Protest participants reframed dominant logics by utilizing civil liberties and corporatization as counter-logics. The findings suggest that the dominant logics of the Olympic Games maintained long-term power and control and effectively delegitimized the voices of Olympic protestors, but protestors exerted their agency through reframing processes. The policy implications for future Olympic bid and host city organizers are to consider how civil liberties and the right to peaceful protest can be fostered in non-adversarial ways.