| dc.description.abstract | Sports journalism has been accused of being the toy department of news media, meaning it is not as serious, and does not hold up to rigorous journalistic standards. The aim of this thesis is not to say whether Norwegian sports journalism is of high or low quality, but rather to explore the politicized aspects of sports coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing, and the football World Cup in Qatar, and furthermore to dissect the politicized aspect of this coverage through the research question “To what degree was sports coverage of the Olympic Games and football World Cup politicized, and how did Norwegian sports journalists write about the political aspects of these sporting events?”. This thesis did a two-fold analysis, the first a quantitative analysis of all articles written about the Olympics and the World Cup from January 1st, 2020, and to the end of the Olympics in February 2022 and December 2022 for the World Cup. After the first analysis a second, qualitative analysis, was performed. What differences are there in the politicized sports coverage of the Olympics and the World Cup? The coverage of the two sporting events differentiates itself in two key aspects. Coverage of the Olympics was mainly concerned about covering the actual competition and who won what contests. This may not seem all that surprising, but when analyzing coverage of the World Cup it became clear that about half of all the articles written were about the politicized aspects of the World Cup. This finding led to the more in-depth qualitative analysis that aimed to shed light on whether the journalistic ideology of Norwegian news media was also apparent in the sports coverage and sports journalism. The qualitative analysis revealed that while there was a massive discrepancy in the overall coverage of the Olympics and the World Cup, there were very little difference in the way sports journalists carried out their work on the politicized aspects of the sporting events. The politicized coverage of both the Olympics and the World Cup followed what I identified as Norwegian journalistic ideology. This led to the conclusion that coverage of the Olympics and World Cup was politicized, the World Cup especially so. Norwegian sports journalists reported on the political aspects of these sporting events as if they were political journalists, prompting the rejection of the notion that sports journalism is the toy department of the news media. | nob |