‘Once My Relatives See Me on Social Media… It Will be Something Very Bad for My Family’: The Ethics and Risks of Organizational Representations of Sporting Girls From the Global South

Abstract

This paper explores the ethics of representing girls and young women from the global South in Sport for Development (SfD) organizational campaigns via the case of Skateistan—an international SfD organization with skateboarding and educational programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and South Africa. Focusing particularly on Skateistan’s representations of skateboarding girls and young women in Afghanistan, we draw upon interviews with staff members as well as digital observations and organizational curriculum materials, to reveal some of the nuanced power relations within such media portrayals. In so doing, we also draw attention to some of the unintended risks of “positive” representations of sporting girls from the global South, and some of the strategies employed by Skateistan to navigate such issues.

Feminist Sport Media Studies in SSJ: Mapping Theoretical Frameworks and Geographies of Knowledge Production

“…Focusing on media coverage about Muslim women during the Olympics, Stevenson (2018) makes a case that "The globalization of women's sports requires a critical transnational feminist lens to interrogate and theorize how empowerment discourse are networked, circulated, and dispersed in a global sport economy" (p. 239). Thorpe et al (2018) conducted research in Afghanistan to examine a skateboarding sport for development program to argue that, in the case of their particular study, "increased coverage of physically active girls and women from the Global South does not necessarily yield better results" (p. 229). The authors emphasize the importance of the specific cultural and political contexts to critique postfeminist discourses and assumptions that inform feminist analyses of sports media in the Global North (Thorpe et al, 2018).…”

“…Thorpe et al (2018) conducted research in Afghanistan to examine a skateboarding sport for development program to argue that, in the case of their particular study, "increased coverage of physically active girls and women from the Global South does not necessarily yield better results" (p. 229). The authors emphasize the importance of the specific cultural and political contexts to critique postfeminist discourses and assumptions that inform feminist analyses of sports media in the Global North (Thorpe et al, 2018).…”

Doing feminist physical cultural research in digital spaces: reflections, learnings and ways forward

“…Holly and co-authors combined an analysis of the NGO's social media usage with interviews with international and local staff, and organisational policy documents, to consider the nuanced power relations of such online portrayals. This work drew attention to some of the unintended consequences of digitally circulating 'positive' representations of sporting girls from the global South (Thorpe, Hayhurst, and Chawansky 2018).…”

“…As well as considering the ethics involved in representing participants in our research, another issue that arose in Holly's research was how to make meaning of the ethics involved in sports and development organisations representing girls and women from different cultures, ethnicities, religions and contexts (Thorpe, Hayhurst, and Chawansky 2018). In an effort to understand the workings of an NGO's online campaigns featuring Afghan girls riding skateboards, the research team conducted a mixed-method approach, including textual analysis of online imagery and their circulation and consumption by global audiences, as well as interviews with international and local Afghan staff involved in the production of such media.…”

The soft power of Arab women’s football: changing perceptions and building legitimacy through social media

“…Within the sport discipline, and female sport research specifically, scholars have increasingly focused on the use of social media by athletes as a form of self-representation (Coche 2017, Toffoletti and Thorpe 2018, Ahmad and Thorpe 2020). The use of social media by Muslim sportswomen and their agency to challenge stereotypes has been presented in Ahmad and Thorpe's work (2020), and the ethical implications involved with international organisations portraying Muslim sport participants appear in Thorpe et al (2018). However, the use of social media strategies by local organisations as part of their wider policies have so far remained unexplored.…”