Representations of the female snowboarders in Instagram - Finding the women snowboarding

Abstract

The main approach of this study is to find out how the professional female snowboarders’ images in Instagram are representing the female snowboarding culture and so creating and maintaining the values of women snowboarding. Questions studied in this research are: What kind of photos professional female snowboarders are posting on their Instagram accounts? What kinds of women are in snowboarding culture? What do these photos tell about female snowboarding culture? Is there women snowboarding culture? I will study and interpret 56 Instagram images under the concept of the critical theory. In this theory, there is used context defining, locating the context for the discursion and finally through the discursion identifying the ideologies and identities presented in the data. Interpretation is seeking encoded meanings from the women snowboarding culture. The study is concentrating on the images of snowboarders as a valuable source of information. The images are important part of their culture and a way to act inside the culture to communicate, take part in the culture and share information and represent their identities and ideologies. This research is also about questions of the gender presentations in the snowboarding culture. The study shows that women snowboarders post in their Instagram accounts photos telling about their life as a professional snowboarder. There are at least two types of female representations in women snowboarding culture: the feminine snowboarder and the neutral female snowboarder. They are differentiating from each other by their representations that are changing from the personal openness to the strict professional imago. Both representations have common purposes on using Instagram as a tool to take part in the snowboarding culture by discussing with the images in a larger network of snowboarding culture and maintaining their status in the snowboarding culture. The female snowboarding culture is in the state where it is starting to show more independent sub-culture form from the original main snowboarding culture. The interpretation proves that there is women snowboarding culture existing and it is growing. The women snowboarding culture needs iconic pro-snowboarding women to break the rules and make new ones inside the masculine snowboarding culture. This study points out that there is more to study in the women representations in snowboarding culture. Moreover this study presents how important the matter of visual is for today people. Understanding, identifying and belonging to something through the visual representations are one way to exist and take part in the networks of communication in communities, nations and globally.