Doha: Scholars from Northwestern’s campuses in Qatar and Evanston examined the intersection of football and society and its social and cultural effects on the Arab World in More Than a Cup: Outside the Touchlines of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, a special series hosted by the Office of the Provost at Northwestern University in the lead-up to the tournament in Qatar.
The event series, which included a podcast episode on football beyond the pitch featuring Pamela Erskine-Loftus and Jack Thomas from the Media Majlis at Northwestern Qatar and a screening of the award-winning documentary The Workers Cup, also featured panels discussions on football of gender, race, human rights, and sports journalism, featuring faculty from Northwestern Qatar.
The series began with a panel discussion on gender, race, and technology in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Northwestern Qatar Professor Claudia Kozman, along with Harry Collins, distinguished research professor, Hofstra University Professor Brenda Elsey, and Rayvon Fouché, director of the social and economic sciences division at the National Science Foundation, examined the imbalance in Western media’s coverage of the World Cup in Qatar and its impact on the perceptions of the Global South.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the reporting on the World Cup is happening behind computers and interviews through email, and a lot of people have not been here but keep writing about it,” said Kozman, assistant professor in residence at the Journalism and Strategic Communication Programme. “Of course, nobody is arguing that some of the issues that have been are important ones, but there is an excessive focus on some problems [in Qatar] while ignoring the other ones, especially when the same issues happen in other countries in the West.”
To overcome Western-centric coverage of the World Cup in Qatar, Kozman made a case for Western media to consider the distinct cultural norms and laws of Qatar while reporting on various societal issues, including gender and women issues. “I see most of the problematic issues as a matter of framing; it’s how you present something,” said Kozman. “Once you change the framing around an issue, most of the anxieties around that issue start to dissipate.”
The second panel, which was moderated by Northwestern Qatar Professor Zachary Wright, focused on media and sports from the perspective of the Global South and included Kozman and Northwestern Qatar Professors Susan Dun and Craig LaMay as panelists, together with J.A. Adande, associate professor and director of sports journalism at Northwestern University.
Drawing insights from her research on global conversations on social media about the Qatar World Cup, Dun, associate professor in residence in the Communication Programme, explained how media narratives have contributed to the variance in the narrative around the tournament between the Global North and Global South.
“When you look at the topical breakdown that we found in our research, the negative topics about the World Cup are almost exclusively coming from the Global North,” said Dun, who went on to examine how variation in the conversation has impacted Qatar’s global image. “Has Qatar’s national branding efforts succeeded? At this point, in the Global North, it would not seem to, but in the Global South, they would seem to have made good progress based on what the distributions of topics were.”
In examining the intersection of sports and media, LaMay, professor in residence and director of the Journalism and Strategic Communication Programme, drew on his research on sports media broadcasting in the Middle East to explain how sports media piracy has been influenced by politics in the region in the lead-up to the World Cup.
In addition to panel discussions and research by faculty, Northwestern Qatar community members are engaged in several World Cup-related academic projects and extracurricular initiatives, including internships at CNN, Fox Sports, beIN Sports, and other international sports and media organisations.
