Play Like a Champion, Post Like a Champion: Investigating Adolescent Female Identity and Social Media
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This intersectional feminist research project critically explores the experiences and identity constructions of adolescent female athletes through social media. Specifically, this research project studies how adolescent female athletes use social media as a possible tool to confront and disrupt current media discourses of female athletes. Grounded in feminist sports media scholarship and intersectional fourth-wave feminism, I engaged in a qualitative virtual ethnography, conducting surveys, collecting and analyzing digital artifacts, and interviewing adolescent female athletes aged 13-18. Findings included four significant themes: 1) Creating Narratives on Social Media, 2) “Legitimate” Athletes and the Female/Athlete Paradox, 3) Gendered Spaces in Sports and Sports Media, and 4) Female Athleticism and Social Justice Participation. Overall, each participant discussed how their identity constructions on social media were intentional and deliberate. Results demonstrate that participants are extremely conscientious social media experts, questioning and working through ideas about where, how and what to post on social media, as they negotiate identities of female athletes. This work provides further insights into the gender inequities and discourses in Canada’s sports and sports media climate, and how these inequities are mediated through social media technologies. This work aims to contribute to the body of intersectional feminist sports media scholarship in ways that legitimize, value and hold true to girls’ experiences and understandings. The overall impact of these studies is significant because this research addresses the challenges of being an adolescent female athlete in the 21st century and how this phenomenon contributes to gender inequities in sports and sports media. Using existing literature and scholarship, I contextualize, expand, and consider the findings, explain theoretical and methodological considerations, and discuss future research projects stemming from this work.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".