Breaking barriers with a football: the activist TikTok narratives of Maymi Asgari

Since its introduction in 2018, TikTok has emerged as a hugely influential, trend-setting social media platform in an increasing range of contexts. Like most other cultural domain, sport is also increasingly consumed through short, spectacular, highlight-focused formats such as TikTok videos, YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, especially among younger generations. This phenomenon is a consequence of fundamental processes of digitization within sport, as digital platforms increasingly are being involved in the production and consumption of sport content. These brief formats have emerged as algorithmically curated and personal alternatives to the traditional, communal address of mass-media sports events such as TV transmissions of football matches and "wraparound" (Goldsmith, 2013) pre- and post-event programs.

As an example of how sport is mediated on short form video, this paper explores how TikTok is employed by female footballers and female football fans in self-presentational performances and for sharing female expressions of football culture. While there is extensive literature examining feminist approaches to sport (e.g. Pfister & Pope, 2018), including specific focuses on older social media like blogs (Antunovic & Hardin, 2013) and Instagram (Toffoletti et al., 2021), sports culture on TikTok, including feminist perspectives, is a profoundly under-researched topic. As such, in a larger perspective the paper hopes to contribute with insights into ways short-form video platforms affect the emergence of new expressions of football culture and sports in general.