Sport, media and the promotion of militarism: Theoretical inter-continental reflections of the United Kingdom and South Korea

The relationship between sport, popular culture, and western militarism is well established with the United States and its western allies witnessing a plethora of popular culture events being co-opted into providing platforms for citizens to “support” their governments’ respective armed forces. Central to such events has been the relationship between sport and the media, with sport having long been a fruitful cultural arena utilized to enable and encourage citizens to support and “thank” national military actors. The mediated spectacle of sport combined with its sacred symbolic significance offers both governments and disparate individuals the sanctuary of the imagined (“democratic”) nation and its accompanying ideological righteousness in the face of an uncertain global political world of “wars on terror,” economic crises,and “fake news.”