The Discourse of Newspaper Sponsorship in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

The Olympic Games have rationally changed to adapt to the media and business environment since the 1980s, even though this has been criticized as ‘commercialism’, in order to help sustain the Olympic Games. Therefore, for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many companies became sponsors in accordance with the domestic situation, and in the newspaper category, several newspapers signed on as sponsors as well. <br> 　This paper summarizes the recent changes in the relationship between the Olympics, the media, and sponsors, and then discusses problems of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Additionally, through text mining analysis, editorial articles from sponsor and non-sponsor newspapers are compared to examine the topics and discourses of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.<br> 　The results show that although the editorials of the sponsor and non-sponsor newspapers referred to the same topics regarding the Olympics, there were differences in their points of view and discourse. In the non-sponsor newspapers, the issues of ‘infection’ and ‘reconstruction’ were discussed as being directly related to the Olympics, while in the sponsor newspapers, these issues were separated from the Olympics and discussed as events outside the Olympics.<br> 　In addition, the issue of newspaper sponsorship was not mentioned in any of the editorials and was only mentioned a few times in general articles as an issue raised by outside individuals. Thus, the newspapers' reporting on sponsorship followed popular sentiment, and the sponsor newspapers in particular had a more ambiguous status of journalistic independence.