Reframing Surfing: Physical Culture in Online Spaces

Abstract

The social media app Instagram has become a popular everyday way to share visual representations of surfing culture and experiences. Providing an alternative to mainstream surf media, images posted on Instagram by women who surf recreationally both disrupt and reinforce the existing sexualisation and differentiation of women in surf culture. Images themselves are not necessarily resistant, yet women are asserting themselves as a voice of surf cultural authority through processes of posting, sharing and engaging with images. While ‘big data’ research about Instagram is proving useful in terms of mapping spaces and movements, this article adopts an ethnographic approach to explore the notion that social media developments are changing possible ways of knowing and representing the world in which we live. Also considered is how lived experiences and social media shape each other in everyday lives and communities.

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