Ruoli di genere e sfide online

This research investigates sports practices through the lens of gender on digital platforms. As they are involved in the construction of corporeality, sports tend to reproduce socially dominant values about what it means to be a woman or a man (Bifulco and Tuselli, 2017). Consequently, the notion that there are 'feminine sports' and 'masculine sports' is widespread (Channon, 2012, 2013; Channon and Jennings, 2014; Ferrero Camoletto and Topini, 2020; Matthews, 2011; Spencer, 2012). Specifically, this study focuses on sporting practices within the new phenomenon of social media challenges. These practices are strongly correlated with concepts such as competition and performance, where gender is also enacted. The aim is to explore to what extent these sports challenges reinforce predominant ideas about femininity and masculinity and in which cases they challenge them. Findings from a visual content analysis of 163 videos - shared on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok over the course of a year - show that these new challenges tend to perpetuate and promote traditional gender differences observed in sports practices, rather than contest them.