Dancing on the Seine: Soft Power, Diversity, Inclusion, and the "Woke" Controversy at the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony

The Olympic and Paralympic Games serve as a vital platform for nations to project soft power and engage in sports diplomacy, showcasing their culture, values, and achievements while aligning with global priorities such as diversity and inclusion. Opening ceremonies blend innovation, heritage, and symbolism to craft narratives that shape international perceptions and national identity. Through a comparative analysis of both the Olympic and Paralympic Opening Ceremonies, this study examines how France deployed diversity messaging across these distinct yet interconnected events. While both ceremonies served as platforms for sports diplomacy, they revealed different symbolic strategies and patterns of public reception, offering insights into how mega-events navigate tensions between inclusive representation and ideological polarization in contemporary society. The ceremony’s focus on diversity and so-called "woke ideology"—a term originally referring to awareness of social injustices but now often politicized as a catch-all for progressive values—aimed to reflect French values while addressing cultural sensitivities and ideological divisions. However, this dual narrative sparked both admiration and criticism, highlighting the challenges of promoting progressive messaging in a fragmented world. To analyze these dynamics, the present study employs a multimodal and semiotic methodological approach, integrating semiotic analysis of the ceremony as a visual-cultural text with critical discourse analysis of its public reception. The research examines the ceremony’s symbols, visual and performative narratives, and the discursive reactions it triggered in media and social networks. By incorporating this dual-level analysis, the study offers insights into the communicative strategies of mega-events and their reception within an era of increasing ideological division. The Paris 2024 case underscores the complexities of presenting cohesive national identities through mega-events, offering valuable insights into their role in soft power and global cultural and political negotiation