The role of sports communication on the Qatar World Cup by football confederations

In 2010, the Fédération Internationale Football Association (FIFA) appointed Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. Since then, Qatar has been linked to human rights violations in the media. Football has become more political, entailing that football confederations are applying sports diplomacy to implement and promoting confederations’ values. The confederations - Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF), Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Confederation of North, Central and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL) – have criticised FIFA for the lack of acknowledgement on the violations that have been happening leading up to the 2022 World Cup, but maintain to stay loyal to the organization. Thus, the aim of the study is to understand the role of sports communication on the Qatar World Cup by the football confederations during the event. Furthermore, what topics are being discussed on the Instagram accounts, how politics is being discussed during the World Cup, and how the variety in online communications can be explained by the football confederations. To answer the research question and sub-questions, a mixed-method approach has been applied with a constructivist grounded theory approach to analyse 154 Instagram posts of the AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC, UEFA, and FIFA-accounts. The findings of the study revealed that the football confederations used Instagram to promote themselves extensively and the World Cup. Furthermore, the confederations are acting as politically uninvolved as possible by promoting content related to the matches, the fans and the events. However, results have shown that the confederations, often implicit, contribute to the political communication that evokes nationalism, branding Qatar as a hospitable host nation, and to contribute to the discussion of human rights. The variety in online communication is depended on the money that the confederations receive from the FIFA and in which the confederations are located and based on the relationship that the Qatar has developed with the confederations during the World Cup. In return, and to also prevent loss of international image, the confederations promote Qatar through nation-branding and nationalist-evoking content.