Description
Athletes can shape attitudes of a wider society, invoke national pride or reduce prejudice toward outgroups. But, we have limited understanding of the impact of adversity of sporting icons and of how it manifests in post-conflict societies. Drawing on theories of ethnic identity salience and contact hypothesis, we investigate the effects of Novak Djokovic's exclusion from the 2022 Australia Open tennis tournament after cancellation of his visa on the salience of ethnic identity among Serbs and on their willingness for contact with Croats, the former adversary from the Serb-Croat conflict (1991-1995). Reports of Djokovic's ordeal featured prominently unconditional support he received from his Croatian coach and friend Goran Ivanisevic who was by his side. Drawing on original data from a nationally representative survey in Serbia and using an "unexpected event during survey design," we compare Serbian respondents' ethnic identification and willingness for inter-group contact before and after Djokovic's visa cancellation. Coupled with quantitative text analysis of the Serbian press reporting of the incident, our findings demonstrate that an athlete's setback abroad strengthens ingroup members' ethnic identification, and point to ineffectiveness of vicarious intergroup contact. The study calls for better understanding of conditions for sporting stars' peace-promoting impact in post-conflict societies.
