Abstract

Olympic Games are referred to as the most important sports event in the world, containing political, economic and cultural interests. This event attracts the attention of vast audiences and gains the exceptional consideration from contemporary media. Due to these reasons the Olympic Games turn into the significant scientific research object. Consequently, the aim of this research is to exhibit the peculiarities of the Olympic Games in Lithuanian press reviews and television broadcasts. The object of this work is to present the information about the Olympic Games provided on the Lithuanian media. In order to achieve the aim the following tasks were defined: explore what part of the Lithuanian media content, particularly press and television, is devoted to Olympic news and sports competition broadcasts; reveal the sport which gets the most of the media coverage in press or the broadcasting time on the television; explore the level of attention (part of the content) Lithuanian press and television pays to men and women Olympic sports competitions; scrutinize the role of information spread on Lithuanian athletes participating in the Olympic Games in press and television broadcasts. The research results confirmed our hypotheses. Firstly, Lithuanian media (press and television) increasingly gives more coverage on the Olympic Games: the number of press publications grows both in quantity and quality, national public broadcaster provides the audience with more Olympic competition broadcasts, creates specials about the Games. Secondly, basketball receives the largest part of press publications and the largest amount of television broadcasts because it is the most popular sport in Lithuania and the team has constant good results. Thirdly, Lithuanian media just like the media in other countries gives more coverage on men than on women sports competitions. This influences how many men and women participate in competitions, in which sports and what results they achieve. It is also noteworthy that the men sports are perceived as more interesting, more attractive. Fourth, Lithuanian media polarizes towards the news, competitions and results of the sports involving Lithuanian athletes, especially if the athletes are expected to achieve good results and win Olympic medals because that interests the press and television audiences. Due to this, the largest part of press publications and television broadcasts give coverage on competitions involving Lithuanian athletes. Verf.-Referat