The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics came to an end Sunday following a 16-day long competition in across 109 events. The closing ceremony was one to remember with snowflake-shaped lanterns and fireworks that spelled out “One World, One Family.”
According to NPR, “The closing ceremony, like the opening one, was a simplified affair compared to the 2008 Summer Games, emphasizing children, Chinese tradition and ordinary people.” Chinese President Xi Jinping sat next to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach in the stands, watching the ceremony unfold.
The closing of the first ever Olympics to take place with Covid-19 restrictions meant a small crowd of invited guests attended the ceremony after the city announced they would not sell tickets to the public. Beijing, the first city to host both the summer and winter Olympic games announced that Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy will be the next destination for the Winter Games.
Recap
In addition to strict Covid-19 restrictions, this year’s Olympics were also marked by a U.S.-led diplomatic boycott over China’s human rights record, tensions between Russia and Ukraine and a high-profile doping saga involving a 15-year-old figure skating phenom.
In early December 2021, the Biden administration revealed they would not be sending any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing Olympic Games given the People’s Republic of China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses. This would be the first time in a long time where no U.S. government officials attended the Games, but U.S. athletes were still able to compete. The last boycott occurred in 1980, when the United States led a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Conversation on social media surrounding the boycott peaked on February 4th– the day of the opening ceremony- when over 4,500 mentions on social media were made regarding the United States decision. The conversation was largely led by News outlets sparking over 11.4K mentions, while Twitter ranked as the second source for this conversation at 2.8K mentions.
Ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine certainly echoed throughout the games as Russia has a previous history of utilizing the Olympic Games as a guise to their advantage. Russia’s invasion of Crimea occurred in 2014 amid the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia during the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Russia also took advantage of the Tokyo Games in 2020 to execute cyberattacks as part of a broader, worldwide hacking campaign. Cyber attacks against Ukraine occurring last Thursday prior to the close of the Olympics were likely no different. This ongoing conversation has garnered 5.29 million mentions on social media since February 1st and has reached over 109 billion feeds. Twitter is the largest leader in the conversation totalling 3.5 million mentions, while News outlets rank second at 631K mentions.
Finally, Kamila Valieva mad headlines following her tearful 4th place finish in women’s single figure skating. The 15-year-old Russian favourite was ruled to participate despite having tested positive for a banned heart medication. Valieva’s test results surfaced following her historic quadruple jump in Olympic competition which helped team Russia secure gold. The United States won the silver. The decision to let her skate again in individual competition sparked controversy in many athletes around the world. More specifically, Valieva was mentioned on social media over 536K times since February 1st. Her story has reached an astronomical 21 billion feeds. This case raised many eyebrows partly due to her age, still being a minor, and Russia’s history of doping in the Olympic Games. Overall sentiment scores revealed the majority of conversations remained neutral (372.9K), while more than 45K mentions were positive and 98K mentions were negative.
The closing ceremony received lots of social media attention on Sunday, reaching over 2 billion feeds across platforms. The Olympics provide an opportunity for global conversation like no other. Our social media data provides a peak into the top trending topics throughout the games and we look forward to analyzing the next Olympics at the Social Media Listening Center.
