Intangible legacies of media-events: Young people's memories and expectations of Olympic Games

This paper deals with the collective legacy around major media-events, such as the Olympic Games. In light of the argument that legacy is intrinsically related to memory and remembering is undoubtedly media-influenced, the proposed study focuses particular on how young inhabitants of London and Rio de Janeiro project their memories and expectations around the Olympic and Paralympic games organised in their cities. Furthermore, it explores how these perceptions contribute to the construction of citizenship values, cultural identity, collective memory and national pride. By doing this, this broader research project addresses the intangible and social legacies that Pierre de Coubertin claims according to whom the historical discourse created by the Olympic Movement, Olimpism, are something that goes beyond sports, and is more a philosophy of life. In this line, Roche suggests that mega-events like the Olympics “seem to have established and enduring popularity and memorability in modern society” (Roche, 2002:3) and states that further qualitative research is needed, particularly on the dimension of media-events and mediatised forms of experience, and cross national studies (Roche, 2002:7). The question posed by this study emerge, as an answer to this claim, on how one might go about to understanding the factors that underpin such popularity and the relation with its audience. Other critics, like Helen Lenskyj, suggest that various programmes put together for young people are often used to influence this group with ideologies that are of government interest rather than serving the young audience's needs (Lenskyj,2008:79) In order to address such questions a qualitative youth-centric study with participants aged between 14-26 years old from different economic and social backgrounds from cities London and Rio Janeiro was undertaken. Interviews with Olympic Committee representatives, Government entities and other organisations involved in organising the Games, both in London and Rio were also conducted to complement the study. A total of 76 participants from London and 96 from Rio were interviewed on their recollections and imaginary in relation to this mega-sporting event, adding to this empirical work theories and contributions from the field of memory and media studies. All this data collected served the sole purpose of identifying the diverse discourses of memory and projection available around the Olympic Games. This study is an original contribution for the field of media and memory studies and therefore invaluable for policy-makers and institutions working for and with youth in the context of the cultural policy and youth engagement on mega-events.