Qatar on the world stage: New research by Christian Gläßel highlighted in NZZ

In the recently-published article "How the World Cup Affected Qatar's Image", the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) featured a new working paper by Christian Gläßel, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for International Security, and his co-authors Adam Scharpf (University of Copenhagen) and Pearce Edwards (Carnegie Mellon). The survey explored the influence of the 2022 FIFA World Cup on German attitudes towards Qatar.

After surveying 2000 people in Germany before and after the World Cup, Gläßel and his co-authors found no significant impact on attitudes towards Qatar. As the NZZ article notes, these findings are in line with larger, multi-country surveys across Europe.  This is an early indication that Qatar’s ‘sportswashing’ campaign may not have been successful, at least with European audiences.

However, there are two interesting shifts in German attitudes which the new study does observe. Firstly, the survey found an overarching positive shift in sentiments towards the Arab world. Secondly, the survey documented a rising mistrust and skepticism towards the media coverage on Qatar and German media in general. This alarming finding may arise from a perceived mismatch between the critical reporting in German media and the glossy, sanitised World Cup coverage emerging from Qatar. The authors warn that such findings demonstrate the risk of polarisation that media coverage of international sporting events carries for democracies abroad.

Read the full article in NZZ here.

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