Looking Green : Visual Environmental Framing of FIFA : The Context of the Football World Cup 2014 in Brazil
Titoff, Ville (2017)
2017
Master's Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2017-02-17
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201702201179
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201702201179
Tiivistelmä
The environment has been studied to have a central role in positively peaceful and sustainable development. Thus, it is important to learn more about the alternative contexts where different actors are shaping the global environmental governance process. My research is mapping these alternative contexts and actors by examining how the global corporation family of the world football federation, FIFA, participated in the environmental framing process in the context of the biggest and the most global popular sports event of the world, the football World Cup. More precisely, the context is the latest World Cup-project in Brazil, between years 2007-2014.
As the visual material is a very powerful tool in different framing processes, the focus in this research has been on the visual publications of FIFA. To be more precise, I have analyzed the environment-related photographs published by FIFA in their official website, fifa.com. These photographs have been analyzed with the methods of social semiotics, and by using the contemporary historical approach with a careful source critique and deep understanding of the time period and locational context. Content analysis helped to categorize my findings.
I discovered that the visual image of the environmental sustainability campaign of FIFA was not as environmentally responsible as it looks at a first glance. It seems that FIFA selected environmental topics that were easy to make look good, and which were able to receive a lot of media attention. This makes sense from a neo-liberal, business-oriented perspective, but if the football federation wants to participate in a positively peaceful environmental development, it should not only be focusing on topics that are easy to make look good in the most visible scenes of the World Cup. Environment should be gaining more from the popularity of the World Cup, and not vice-versa.
Generally, this means that the value of popular sports in relation to the environmental development would also be recognized more seriously on the academic level. It would mean that the mega-level sports events, which receive a huge international attention, are thought more as scenes for the global environmental governance. In these scenes corporations and organizations are competing to get their share of the massive international publicity and thus, their share of the possibility to affect the current structures of the global governance.
As the visual material is a very powerful tool in different framing processes, the focus in this research has been on the visual publications of FIFA. To be more precise, I have analyzed the environment-related photographs published by FIFA in their official website, fifa.com. These photographs have been analyzed with the methods of social semiotics, and by using the contemporary historical approach with a careful source critique and deep understanding of the time period and locational context. Content analysis helped to categorize my findings.
I discovered that the visual image of the environmental sustainability campaign of FIFA was not as environmentally responsible as it looks at a first glance. It seems that FIFA selected environmental topics that were easy to make look good, and which were able to receive a lot of media attention. This makes sense from a neo-liberal, business-oriented perspective, but if the football federation wants to participate in a positively peaceful environmental development, it should not only be focusing on topics that are easy to make look good in the most visible scenes of the World Cup. Environment should be gaining more from the popularity of the World Cup, and not vice-versa.
Generally, this means that the value of popular sports in relation to the environmental development would also be recognized more seriously on the academic level. It would mean that the mega-level sports events, which receive a huge international attention, are thought more as scenes for the global environmental governance. In these scenes corporations and organizations are competing to get their share of the massive international publicity and thus, their share of the possibility to affect the current structures of the global governance.