Winter Olympics a Test Case for Power of Social Media

The Winter Olympics kicked off just days ago in Vancouver, Canada. As always, the primary media coverage is traditional television, but there’s a new and essential spin this year – social media.

As Alexandra Samuel points out in her blog for Harvard Business Review,  the Winter Olympics is “a living social media experiment.” While social media was used during the Summer Games in Beijing, “this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime,” says Samuel.

Social media is having an impact that goes beyond the Olympics Games themselves. For example, the city of Vancouver became a hotbed of social media activity well before the games even started. Vancouver’s local media coverage of the Olympics has also changed dramatically, according to Samuel. Citizen journalists, she says, “have provided an alternate – and often critical – take on the Games.” Linda Solomon, publisher of the Vancouver Observer, an online news magazine that recruited over 150 contributors, tells Samuel, “It’s not about crafting a story anymore, which is an art that takes many years to master. It’s about telling what you see and think, something anybody can do. This levels the playing field.”

Another area that is depending heavily on social media is the “Cultural Olympiad” – an entire series of multi-disciplinary festivals running before, during, and after the Games. The Cultural Olympiad showcases Canadian and international music, dance, theater, visual arts, and film.

In addition to making early use of Twitter and Facebook, the Cultural Olympiad launched Canada CODE, a giant digital project that, for a year before the Olympics, provided Canadians with an online platform for “connecting, creating and collaborating” with the people of the world to present “an ever-evolving portrait” of Canadians. The culmination of CODE is an invitation to enter the “Virtual Stadium” and upload a personal photo for a chance to be a virtual part of the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

The International Olympics Committee has had to deal with the impact of social media by establishing regulations for its use. The IOC allows athletes to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools as well as blogs, but requires that they limit any posts to personal experiences. “You can’t act as a journalist if you aren’t,” said Bob Condron, director of media services for the United States Olympic Committee. “You need to do things in a first person way.” Athletes are also forbidden to reference any sponsor or advertiser that is not an official Olympic partner. Condron told Wired, “These are going to be the Twitter Olympics.”

Whatever happens during the Olympics, it seems clear that social media has changed the ground rules. Says Samuel, “On the one hand, the Olympic narrative of global community seems like a natural fit for social media… On the other hand the complexity and business model behind the Games make the prospect of grassroots storytelling a huge challenge.”