Opening ceremonies and closing narratives : the embrace of media and the Olympics

Reflecting on media and the Olympics always involves much more than the technical quality of the coverage and the means of accessing it. There is now a considerable literature on the Olympics and Olympic media that engages with the enduring questions of socio-cultural power and politics, including social class, commercialization, indigeneity, ‘race’, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, urban conflict, citizenship, the state and national identity. Each successive Olympiad elicits additions to this literature that address both the general questions that historically apply to all Games, and the specific context of each host city and nation. This special issue of JOMEC Journal engages in a range of ways with the cultural politics of the mediated Olympics, focusing on the recent London 2012 Games that took place in the same country as the journal is located, and also raising issues that resonate with past and future Games in this and other places As such, it contributes in its own way to the contested cluster of outcomes that preoccupies Olympic discourse from the moment that cities determine whether to launch bids to host the Games – the Olympic legacy.