‘Sportswashing’ as mediated deceit: applying a critical disinformation model to address political (mis)communication through sports

The article highlights the need to decouple discussions about political (mis)communication and abuses of sport from the narrow conceptual preoccupation of ‘sportswashing’ with authoritarian deception and as a means to conceal human rights abuses. The discussion begins with an overview of the conceptual shortcomings of the widely applied notion of ‘sportswashing’, often used as an antonym for ‘soft power’, including a lack considerations of the role of media technologies and logics on the one hand, and the emotional engagement and reception of sports’ mediation on the other. To address these conceptual blindspots, a shift towards media and audience-centred approaches, inspired by Critical Disinformation Studies, will help us to better interpret the mechanics of informational manipulation through sport, including accounting for the power of affect and emotions and their consequences. The discussion introduces elements of a novel ‘Disinformation Lifecycle’ model, which expands our view of the logics and workings of problematic information circulation and its effects through the dimensions of truth authentication, time, cross-border collusions, linguacultural fluctuations, and dialogic relationships. We apply this five-part apparatus to informational flows around Qatar 2022 to interpret the way communication about, mediation of, and emotional engagement with sport serves as a site for negotiation of socially and politically significant issues among transnational audiences. This model helps us to better account for attributes of deceptive narratives, how they are disseminated through mediation of sports, and their observable and potential effects.