“Doping Shadow Still Hard to Escape“: Facing up to Reflections in German Print Media on Doping Scandal

Abstract

The paper reflects important features and developments of doping affair with Russian sportsmen as a media scandal. This communicative event is introduced through the current examples taken from the German national and regional press. The mechanisms of the formation and topicalization of the event are revealed in the paper. The global context of the scandal is covered and exampled by co-referential areas “Sport” and “Olympics”. Their presentation and interpretation occur under conditions of so-called “fake news” and “media performance” strategies. The examples presented in chronological order reflect the communicative dynamics of the media event ‘doping scandal’. The remarkable features of the distinguishing journalistic style and informative media genres are covered in the paper.