‘She has like 4000 followers!’: the celebrification of self within school social networks.

Abstract

Her main research interests are teaching, learning and the curriculum in the physical education context. 'She has like 4000 followers!': the celebrification of self within school social networks. Online social interaction has become integral to contemporary social life, adding new dimensions to how young people learn, interact, and perceive themselves and one another. This paper presents theoretical insights from a year-long ethnographic study within a Scottish secondary school, where participant observation and qualitative interviews were used to explain pupils' informal social relationships. Here, pupils aged 11-18 constructed and negotiated a hyper-surveillanced social space within which many became (or strived to become) visible and 'known' amongst others and where online presentations of self were highly important. This facilitated a celebrity-esque culture amongst the pupil population whereby pupils learnt from and emulated macro celebrity culture and often framed social interactions as entertainment. Central to these practices, was a continual desire to "make gains in distinction" by demonstrating high social status amongst peers. The paper explores the resulting implications for teaching, learning and pupil wellbeing within contemporary educational environments.

Postfeminist biopedagogies of Instagram: young women learning about bodies, health and fitness

“…As participants in our study explained: Amanda: Because you can put comments like "I do not like that you have so much muscle" or "you're not a real girl" ... Alma: Or the typical one of someone being told that she is fat when she is not Eva: Or she's thin and they call her anorexic or things like that because she does sports, that she has a problem or an obsession when she's just doing sports (focus group 4). This supports previous research where young adolescents have perceived their bodies and their actions to be intensely scrutinised by their peers within an online environment (MacIsaac et al, 2018). Similarly, our participants used tools (such as 'liking' and commenting in pictures) to explicitly monitor one another, leading to a hyper-critical social space whereby perceptions of the (dis)approval of others was used to regulate how they engage with their own bodies.…”

“…They were the 'confident girls' (Favaro, 2017) who were aware that they could become 'do it yourself' celebrities, perhaps because their bodies did appear to be close to the 'perfect body'. Therefore, whilst previous research has evidenced the desires of young people to emulate a celebrity-like selfpresentation online (MacIsaac et al, 2018), our research evidences that the production of such content on Instagram is restricted to those having a certain body, thus disempowering most of the girls, and reproducing the postfeminist biopedagogy about female fit bodies on Instagram.…”

What young people tell us about health-related social media and why we should listen

“…The importance of understanding how young people behave in their engagement with social media is further reflected in the research on gender and sexuality. Similar to James (2014), a number of scholars have pointed out that self-presentation on social media is of central importance to young people, and can drive the ways in which they participate, interact, and communicate (Handyside and Ringrose 2017;MacIsaac et al 2018;Mascheroni, Vincent, and Jimenez 2015;Ringrose et al 2013;Walsh 2017). It has also been reported that many young people use social media in a sexualised way, posting photos of their bodies that conform to normative sexualised stereotypes (Handyside and Ringrose 2017;Mascheroni, Vincent, and Jimenez 2015;Ringrose et al 2013;Walsh 2017).…”

“…Others have argued that young people's extensive and habitual uses of social media challenge the outdated notion that a dualism exists between 'real' life and online spaces (boyd 2014; Ito et al 2010;Third et al 2014). A dissolution of the online/offline binary is made apparent where social media operates as an active digital space for young people where relationships, identities, and intimacies are formed (boyd 2014; Handyside and Ringrose 2017;MacIsaac et al 2018), and where learning can occur as a result of observing and communicating with peers of the same age (Ito et al 2010). In this sense, social media is not merely a space where young people go to document their lives (Handyside and Ringrose 2017).…”

The Quantified Athlete: Associations of Wearables for High School Athletes

“…With increasing types of apps, there are more opportunities for adolescents to express themselves through social media and thus reinforce the identity. The number of followers in a social media account can turn an individual into a minicelebrity and the identity that is associated with that [24]. Technology in sports is a fast growing field, which enables more products to be more affordable and provides more purposeful human computer interactions.…”