The Right to Profitable Speech: Olympians, Sponsorship, and Social Media Discourse

Social media has given athletes unprecedented voice and direct access to audiences. To analyze the influence of athletes in the production of mediasport narratives, the focus on mediasport interpellation theory is applied to athletes as both readers and producers of consumerist mediasport hails and is then explored in two case studies. During the 2012 Olympics, a band of athletes launched the #WeDemandChange campaign against Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter, which limits social media speech rights. This impedes financial opportunities because they are unable to blog and tweet about their sponsors if they are not also Olympic sponsors. In 2016, non-Olympic sponsors furthered anti-Rule 40 protests, positioning themselves as covictims. The 2012 and 2016 campaigns framed Rule 40 as a civil rights and speech advocacy issue; however, they primarily focused on building better market conditions for non-Olympic sponsors. In so doing, they obfuscated systemic conditions that contribute to the untenable financial situations described in the protests themselves. Ultimately, it is argued that athletes, as reader-producers who are hailed by and operate within the commercial mediasport complex, are subject to and perpetuate the interpellative power of mediasport and the consumerist ideology it supports