The poster's focus will be an ongoing research project, aiming to analyse teenage girls' affective and sociocultural negotiations in the changing room, with smartphones and social media as part.
Physical activity is something teenage girls engage in both in leisure time and within school. To be physically active, one often needs to go through the changing room. However, previous research shows pupils sometimes experience the room as problematic, especially teenage girls (Gymnasieskolernes Idrætslærerforening, 2018; Moen et al., 2018). Furthermore, teenage girls do not use social media; they live social media (Goodyear et al., 2022). Social media has changed social interactions, which now can move through (the changing room) walls (Couldry & Hepp, 2018). One of the reasons for pupils' experienced problematic was the presence of smartphones and the fear of being photographed and spread on social media (Jönsson, 2016).
To investigate this, a flexible theoretical framework is to be used. The definition of the body is through new materialism and the notion of body and mind as intertwined. The social is learned through sociocultural regimes and intersubjective bodily practises, as part of the world with other materiality (Allegranti, 2013). To investigate the body, affect theory, elaborated by Probyn (2005), is to be used.
The method is semi-structured interviews with walk-along and a visual component consisting of a video camera. The method is inspired by short-term ethnography (Pink & Morgan, 2013). The selection is teenage girls in Sweden. The participant will be followed through the changing room while showing and explaining their practice (fully dressed, in an empty room). Meanwhile, an interview will be conducted. By filming, multidimensional data is collected.
The expected finding is a deeper understanding of teenage girls changing room experience and practises. How they negotiate in the room, and how smartphones and social media take part or not.
The relevance to Nordic educational research is how the perception and usage of changing rooms seem to have shifted from being a natural part in connection to physical activity to being a room inflicting insecurity amongst pupils and debates amongst teachers.