ATHLETES will be thrown out of the London Olympics if they over-step the mark on Twitter and facebook, the International Olympic Committee has warned today.
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Though athletes at the 2012 Games are to be allowed to “post, blog and tweet their experiences”, they are banned from reporting in the style of journalists, posting camera-phone videos or using “vulgar or obscene words or images”.
Transgressions of the new social media code can be met with the removal of a participant’s accreditation. In other words, athletes could be banned.
The new rules would seem to leave competitors with little option other than to write bland ‘what I did on my holiday’ style messages. The IOC more or less admits as much when it suggests athletes use “first-person, diary-type formats”.
Given that “the style of journalists” comes in many variations and that “vulgar words” are often in the eye of the beholder, the IOC would appear to have given itself carte blanche to ban whatever and whoever it doesn’t like.
It is true that at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, restrictions on the use of social media were even tighter, but everyone thought that was to placate China’s ruling clique and, in any case, Twitter had only just got going and facebook was used mainly by the kids.
In this case, the IOC is out to protect its own reputation and the ‘image rights’ of commercial sponsors.
