Thirty-four years ago,
two incredible powerhouses took the ice in one of the greatest Olympic
stand-offs in history- the United States versus the Soviet Union. Today, the same two nations (with the
Soviet Union now being Russia) competed for the gold medal both nations
craved. The only real difference
was the change of players and the location of the competition had shifted from
Lake Placid, New York to Sochi, Russia.
When the two nations
competed for Olympic gold years before, the main goal of the Olympics was to
prove which nation was the real world superpower, as there couldn’t truly be
two world leaders. It was a heated
competition that had become the main focus of the 1980 Olympic Games, and
later, the plot to the much acclaimed film “Miracle.” During this game, the Cold War was fought on the ice. Soviet professional hockey players who consistently bullied "All-Stars" from North America were now up against the infamous Coach Herb Brook's rag tag group of talented, cohesive college aged hockey players. The American population identified with the underdogs. While this may be a bit of a stretch, it also
foreshadowed the triumph of the United States over the Soviet Union as a
superpower in the global community, with the Soviet Union’s collapse following
about a decade later. Media played
a major part in creating hysteria and increasing national pride and patriotism
in the United States when US hockey defeated debatably the greatest hockey
powerhouse in the world.
The media has always
played a crucial role in creating hype around sporting events. In actuality, the media has always
greatly influenced public opinion, regardless of the event in question, but to
stay on topic, sports have always been a popular global pastime and thus a
major focus of the news. With the
Olympic Games occurring only every four years, this year’s Olympic games have
especially created waves in worldwide news outlets, from the bombings close to
Sochi a mere few weeks before the Opening Ceremony to each specific Olympic
event. The Men’s Hockey game of
Russia versus the United States was no exception. News articles relating titles such as “Oshie leads US to
Epic Olympic Hockey Shootout Win over Russia” or “Russian hockey team carries
expectations of entire country…” have blown up social media sites such as
Twitter and Facebook and each Internet search engine site. On Twitter specifically, hundreds of
thousands of people have been tweeting about the outcome of the game, from
Olympic enthusiasts to major corporations, such as Bounty paper towels and Nike
sports gear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/sports/olympics/the-remarkable-one-man-show-called-t-j-oshie.html?_r=0
Most of the improvements I would make are to do with stylistic and wording choices. For instance, the articles linked at the bottom of the post could be hyperlinked in the post itself. Some of the sentences have odd wording choices, and are close to not making grammatical sense, and some sentence's structures make the post itself hard to read. Other than that, the content is good, though you may want to link more examples of media coverage to hockey and why it remains politically relevant.
ReplyDeleteNice post, John. I love hockey, so I was really interested to read your post. The only thing I would suggest is to expand a little more upon how the media was portraying the game in a more political way, if possible. You touched upon how the media portrayed the huge rivalry back in 1980, and what the political implications (and foreshadowing as you said) were, in a great way, but I think it would be helpful to add a little more about what they are saying now about those political implications and what that might mean for the two countries in the present day and going forward.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some interesting points here and the use of visuals in the blog is very good, but you will want to make the “politics” side more clear in this post. It’s apparent in the Cold War section somewhat, but then when you move into the third paragraph, the political content seems to be absent entirely. Also, I think you want to revise to point to specific examples of media coverage or media outlets whenever possible – right now some of those references to “the media” are just too general, and you don’t have clear evidence to back up your claims. As one example, when you say, “Media played a major part in creating hysteria and increasing national pride and patriotism in the United States when US hockey defeated debatably the greatest hockey powerhouse in the world,” it would be great if you could link us to some evidence of this, and be more specific about what forms of media you are talking about. The post is a little on the short side, so perhaps enhancing this content will help increase the length. Also, you will want to fix the links for the final version, to embed them in the text and make sure they are all working.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this post and I think relating media and politics to sports was an interesting and unique choice. One minor adjustment I would make is embedding those hyperlinks into the article itself so it looks cleaner. Also, you could lengthen the article by possibly talking about other major sports events that the media has used to bring the country together. Since I play soccer I'm a bit biased here, but you could use the upcoming World Cup or past World Cups as an example. Always seems like people gather together when they take place. Or whenever the United States plays Mexico in a soccer match as well. I think there's a lot of different ways you can take your article so overall it has a very good foundation.
ReplyDelete