2022 Beijing winter Olympic games: The effect of media visual primes on American public opinion about the Olympics and China

Abstract

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics took place when American public opinion about China was already predominantly negative as media reports had a lot of highlights of human rights violations happening in China. Besides, earlier, the global image of China was undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we explored whether American public opinion about the Olympics and China can be influenced by images of the Olympics shared in the media. Findings from the 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design suggest that the opinions about the Olympics can be predicted by people's beliefs about China's role in the global pandemic. In addition to that, our findings suggest that pre-existing opinions and feelings held by most of the population can mitigate the effects of visual primes.