FIFA World Cup as a catalyst for Qatar to achieve its goals on sustainability and sports diplomacy

Abstract

The FIFA 2022 World Cup provided Qatar with the chance to advance its sports diplomacy while skillfully introducing and describing the nation. The FIFA World Cup was considered as a chance to advance intercultural understanding, foster conversation between locals and visitors from around the globe, advance knowledge of the local culture, and make themselves known to the outside world. Qatar has likewise prioritized sustainable development since 2008. In addition to constructing state-of-the-art stadiums, Qatar has prepared for the event as a catalyst for long-lasting sustainable development. In this study, 193 tweets with the hashtags “Qatar2022” and “SeeYouInQatar” and videos posted on the official Twitter account for the Qatar FIFA World Cup (Road to 2022 @roadto2022en) between 7 December 2020 and 13 April 2022 were subjected to semiotic analysis using five videos that received the most likes. In addition, content analysis using comments on these tweets was also used. In order to understand the issues in sports diplomacy, this study used a dual methodology to examine the relationship between the perception of sustainability in the visual and the perception of sustainability produced in the comments.