Replication Data for: Nationality Swapping in the Olympic Games 1978-2017: A Supervised Machine Learning Approach to Analysing Discourses of Citizenship and Nationhood

Abstract: While the practice of nationality swapping in sports traces back as far as the Ancient Olympics, it seems to have accelerated over the past decades. Cases of Olympic athletes who switched their national allegiances are often surrounded with controversy. Two strands of thought could help explain this controversy. First, these cases are believed to be indicative of the marketisation of citizenship. Second, these cases challenge established discourses of national identity as the question ‘who may represent the nation?’ becomes contested. Using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, I analysed 1534 English language newspaper articles about Olympic athletes who switched their nationalities (1978-2017). The results indicate (i) that switching national allegiance has not necessarily become more controversial, (ii) that most media reports do not frame nationality swapping in economic terms, and (iii) that nationality swapping oftentimes takes places rather unnoticed. I therefore conclude that a marketisation of citizenship is less apparent in nationality switching than some claim. Moreover, nationality switches are often mentioned rather casually, indicating the generally banal character of nationalism. Only under certain conditions ‘hot’ nationalism sparks the issue of nationhood.

摘要：体育领域的国籍变更实践可追溯至古代奥林匹克运动会，但近几十年来该现象似呈加速之势。奥运运动员变更国籍效忠对象的案例往往伴随争议。学界存在两种思路可阐释此类争议：其一，此类案例被认为是公民身份市场化的表征；其二，当“谁可代表国家”这一问题引发争议时，这些案例挑战了既有的民族身份话语体系。本研究采用前沿机器学习技术，对1978年至2017年间1534篇关于奥运运动员变更国籍的英文报刊文章展开分析。研究结果显示：其一，变更国籍效忠对象未必会引发更多争议；其二，多数媒体报道并未从经济维度解读国籍变更行为；其三，国籍变更往往在较少受关注的情况下发生。因此本研究得出结论：公民身份市场化在体育国籍变更案例中的体现并不如部分学者所言那般显著。此外，国籍变更的相关提及往往较为随意，这反映出民族主义通常具有平庸性特征，仅在特定条件下，“炽热”民族主义才会触发民族身份议题。