Sports, Politics and the Media in the Context of Modern Geopolitical Processes

Abstract

A global phenomenon that is becoming more and more obvious as a key trend in the modern world, facing geopolitical challenges and transformations, is the implementation of the principle of unlimited political interference in sports – in professional, top-level – turns it from a factor contributing to the unification of people, their mutual understanding and overcoming cultural, ethnic and national differences, into a widely used tool of political pressure on the opponent and the harsh promotion of ideological projects. The article is based on the material of various genre publications that appeared in the period 2014–2024. In the Russian and Bulgarian mass media, the key aspects related to the use of sports and sporting events for political and instrumental purposes are considered, some conflict situations are analyzed, which are clearly demonstrated by the forced politicization of sports and its dependence in the modern world on political structures that subordinate sports and in particular the Olympic Movement to laws that are not typical of them. Mass media, both socio-political and specialized, being an instrument not only of public dialogue, but also of management, create a "stage" perceived by the widest audiences, on which ideological plots containing politically biased meanings, definitions and assessments of social and sports reality are increasingly played out. The article concludes that the forced politicization of sports is becoming an everyday reality today and that sports are now being included in the policy of ideological confrontation. The conducted research made it possible to identify evaluative meanings and political and ideological attitudes transmitted to society through the media.