New media technologies in lifestyle sport

‘New Media Technologies in Lifestyle Sport’ Paul Gilchrist and Belinda Wheaton In Hutchins/Rowe (eds.) Digital Media Sport: Technology and Power in the Network Society ** Revised draft – 30 July 2012 ** Introduction Detailed attention to the role of ‘specialist’ or subcultural media in the creation and evolution of sporting subcultures, and the construction and performance of identities in different sporting contexts, is surprisingly limited (Wheaton and Beal, 2003). As Wilson argues, “given the increasingly global character of sport subcultures”, and the “long-standing relationship between these groups and both mass and niche medias” it is extremely surprising that “so little research in the sociology of sport literature has examined the role of the internet in subcultural life” (Wilson, 2008: 149). Thus, our focus here is to explore the location and use of the media in the lives of lifestyle sport participants. While the focus of our discussion is on the use of social networking sites and platforms in parkour, we locate the adoption of media technologies historically, turning to the more established lifestyle sports of climbing and surfing in order to contextualise the role of the media in subcultural life. Theoretically, our research is located in previous work on sporting subcultural formations (Atkinson and Young, 2008b; Wheaton, 2007) emerging from the post-CCCS conceptualisation of youth subcultures (Bennett and Kahn- Harris, 2004; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003), and their relationship to mainstream and niche medias (Thornton, 2005, Wheaton & Beal, 2003). It is also informed by audience research in media and cultural studies, particularly the ‘new paradigm’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998) sometimes termed the spectacle/performance paradigm. This approach recognises the active role consumers play simultaneously as performers and audiences in their everyday media- saturated lives. Our chapter is structured as follows. First, the relationship between lifestyle sports and their medias is briefly discussed, illustrating that lifestyle sport cultures can be thought of as ‘taste cultures’ (Thornton, 1995). Specialist subcultural media - including networked media - play a central role in participation and the creation and circulation of the symbols and meanings of subcultural capital. Second, the development of climbing and surfing is outlined illustrating the place of media technology innovation in these lifestyle sport cultures. Our focus is then on parkour and freerunning. Drawing from original research, we analyse the impact of networked digital communications in parkour and the opportunities it provides for participants within the subculture and the wider cultural economy. The lifestyle sportscape Lifestyle sport refers to of a range of mostly individualised activities, from established and residual sports like climbing, surfing and skateboarding, to newer activities like parkour, wake 1 boarding, B.A.S.E. jumping and kite surfing (Wheaton, 2004: 140; Wheaton, forthcoming). Numerous comprehensive commentaries have been produced that identify the key characteristics of lifestyle sport, their histories, ideologies and contribution to new forms of social identity. The sports are marked by their negation of and challenge to Western ‘achievement’ sport cultures, often taking place in spaces lacking regulation and control, and taking on forms that diverge from traditional rule-bound, competitive and institutionalised sport. Importantly for our purposes here, while they are activities that have historically been outside of ‘mainstream’ sport media provision1, lifestyle sport subcultures, such as surfing and skateboarding, have also been pioneering in their adoption of media technologies and particularly forms of DIY media production and distribution. Indeed, although lifestyle sports have failed to make much of an impact on the mainstream media’s sporting schedules, their impact on the broader mediascape is pervasive. ESPN’s X Games, the spiritual home of the ‘extreme sport’ phenomena, sits at the centre of the global diffusion and expansion of lifestyle sport, and has been extremely successful in attracting youth audiences globally (Rinehart, 2008; Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011). Blurring the boundaries between music festival and sporting event, the X Games offer spectators, viewers and athletes a unique physical, visual and virtual experience that differs from traditional sporting events (Rinehart, 2008). An array of interactive digital media technologies are used to actively engage fans. For example, during the 2009 Winter X Games viewers and spectators were given the chance to vote via text message to determine the winners of events such as the Ski and Snowboard Big Air competition. The success of the X Games in attracting younger audiences has been noted by the Olympic movement, which has borrowed many of the strategies employed by the X Games in a bid to modernise events (Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011). This chapter documents the ways in which social networking sites and digital media technologies have had a profound impact on how we view subcultural life, particularly the ways in which it enables interaction and exchange between subcultural groups and participants to be made at a global level. However, we are mindful of tendencies to “overstate the impact of the internet on social life” (Wilson, 2008: 141), recognising there are important continuities with pre-internet forms of communication and niche medias. As Wilson argues, research has tended to explore various online subcultures, without adequately recognising the multiple ways in which internet associated experiences (e.g. chat rooms, blogs, emails, social media, reading websites) are also related to ‘off-line’ activities (see also, Wilson and Atkinson, 2005). Thus, in assessing the impacts of various new media technologies on lifestyle sport subcultures, a historical perspective is adopted, reminding us that the use of niche DIY media is a long- standing feature of these cultures, central to the expression and reproduction of identities. Thus, the first section of the chapter offers a brief genealogy of the implementation and adoption of media technologies in two lifestyle sports: mountaineering and surfing, to illustrate how advances in communication technologies fuelled their development and popularity. Lifestyle sport and the development of the niche media: a genealogy The application of technologies has been crucial to the transformation of the mountain as a distant object of Romantic reverence to one of sporting consumption. Advances in optics in the nineteenth century, particularly the production of telescopes, turned mountaineering into a 1With the exception of the Winter Olympics and surfing particularly in Australia (see Thorpe and Wheaton, 2011). 2 public spectacle as voyeuristic tourists flocked to the Alps to view climbing bodies. Mountains became theatrical spaces, sites of high drama and intrigue (Colley, 2010). By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the use of cameras by mountaineers brought new and additional meanings to the sport. As Douglas A. Brown argues, photographs were not merely reproductions, they were extensions of what the climber desired to feel. The use of photography allowed climbers to reconfigure their aesthetic expectations, and to gradually dismantle Romantic notions of the picturesque and sublime which had framed the experience of the mountains for over a century. The camera lens thus enabled new relationships between the mountaineer, nature and landscape to form, and in the process redefined what was beautiful, spectacular, and worth the physical effort (Brown, 2007). By the mid-1920s, the summit photo was a habitual part of the climbing experience, becoming a conventional way of marking personal and group achievement. Documentary film was embraced by mountaineering expeditions, famously employed in the 1922 and 1924 Mount Everest expeditions to document achievements. Film was also used as a promotional tool and saleable product to defray costs and garner support for further expeditions. In the post-war era, interest in climbing shown by television, now able to provide up-close and live images using lightweight portable cameras, enabled a new generation of working class climbers to forge careers out of the activity, turning them into household names (Gilchrist, 2007; Osborne, 2010). These examples reveal that when we seek to identify the impacts produced by media technologies on lifestyle sport we need to proceed with a degree of analytical precision and historical awareness. These qualities inform the types of claim we can make about the role of media technologies in attracting participants and audiences, bringing action into the domestic sphere, creating new celebrities, and altering the social rituals of the lived experience. Nevertheless, changes have occurred. Within climbing it has now become an increasingly accepted practice to use social networking sites to relay progress. The first ascent of the northwest face of the Great Trango Tower, Pakistan, in 1999, involved a film crew and daily web updates via an elaborate satellite link-up to base camp. This arrangement led to fears that if the practice was widely adopted the publicity would marginalise achievements on harder routes and lead experienced climbers to chase commercial avenues rather than take on new challenges at the boundaries of the sport (Chabaline et al., 2000).Yet, it has been reported that “from-the- route” uses of social networking sites is now common amongst individual climbers seeking adventure beyond the well-funded large expedition. Climbers in Yosemite, for instance, have provided real-time commentary through the use of solar-charged iPhones to update facebook pages for thousands of followers. This practice has led the climbing establishment to express concern over potentially altered attitudes to risk, or what is known as ‘Kodak courage’ – the tendency to go beyond one’s physical limits when photographed or filmed (Gasperini, 1999) – and the diminishment of the concentration needed to execute careful movements. Put simply, how can one climb properly and safely if glued to the iPhone? (Lowther, 2011). The relationship between the culture of surfing and evolving media technologies is also well documented. Like climbing, still and moving images, popularized the activity amongst participants and wider constituencies. As Booth outlines, the Hollywood beach movies (produced in the 1950s) and surfing niche media, initially films (1950s) and subsequently magazines (from the 1960s) and videos played a central role in the global popularity and 3 diffusion of surfing. Whilst mainstream films about surfing, such as the AIP Hollywood beach movies, were shunned by the surfing community, specialist surf films “produced by surfers for surfing audiences” quickly became important products, often consumed in communal settings, “explaining surfing and surfers to themselves” (Booth, 2001: 94). By the 1980s, mass produced surf films were replaced by a proliferation of videos and then DVDs, predominantly produced by the surf industry2 (equipment and clothing manufacturers), as a cost-effective way to promote their products via sponsored riders. These represented, Booth argues, a “distinctively new post- Fordist form of production” that helped to define the niche market (Booth, 1996). By the 1990s magazines were produced and distributed across national boundaries, targeting an increasingly broad and fragmented surfing audience. The magazines served important functions; for instance, deepening the sense of belonging to a unique community of participants. As Wheaton (2003) has argued, they should be seen as both ‘information bearers’ and ‘membership documents’ for how they inform readers about the sports value system and lifestyle, and particularly about forms of insider knowledge such as equipment, skills and techniques. However, the space of surfing magazines - like the subculture itself - was a (contested) male world in which female performers were tolerated, but only if their presence didn’t encroach sufficiently to challenge the male hegemony of elite sport (Booth, 1996; Booth, 2008; Henderson, 2001; Wheaton, 2003). While the most popular surf magazines like Tracks centred on the young white male short-board riders, publications also emerged for female surfers (e.g. Surfer Girl; Wahine), ‘soul’ surfers (The Surfer’s Path; The Surfer’s Journal), and paddle surfing specific publications (SUP)(see also Booth, 2008: 22). The magazines share conventions with surf films. Action photographs dominate the magazine content; large telephoto lens and fast shutter speeds freeze and dramatise the action (Wheaton, 2003). As Ford and Brown (2005: 33) argue, surfing is primarily a visual culture and photography drives the sale of surfing magazines. As in mountaineering culture, the natural environment is pronounced in the visual presentation of the sport. The waves and ocean take centre stage and photographic images focus on their rhythm and power, using techniques such as under-water photography, boats, jet skis, and poles to provide an ‘authentic representation’ of the ocean; one that reproduces the surfers’ point of view, particularly the experience of being inside waves or ‘tubes’ (Ormrod, 2007). Despite the centrality of film and magazines to the evolution of surfing subcultures, the last decade has seen a wide range of digital media emerge in the shape of on-line forums, interactive webpages, on-line magazines and films. Commercially produced print magazines have developed on-line versions (which, in some cases, require a paid subscription) and these now sit alongside a range of on-line self-published products. As documented in climbing and in the case of parkour below, technological advances in video equipment have revolutionized participant-driven visual production, and the Internet provides the means for their distribution. Social networking sites are used to relay progress on ‘surfaris’, and DIY movies and images are posted on sites like YouTube and the surf weather forecast site, Magic Seaweed. Yet, these digital media tools have supplemented rather than replaced ‘older’ media, and the same conventions in style are replicated. As Wilson highlights, the distinctions between virtual and real are often more relevant for scholars than the subculturalists who use them, whose 2Although many who work in the surf industry are surfers themselves; furthermore this insider status is a way that brands claims their authenticity (see Wheaton and Beal, 2003). 4 “cultural lives include relatively seamless and frequent transitions across the appropriate online-offline divide”(Wilson, 2008: 135). New media and lifestyle sport: the case of parkour The remainder of the chapter presents a case study developed from research into the emergence and institutionalization of parkour in the UK (see Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). Briefly, parkour is a form of human movement that focuses on ‘efficient motion’ over, under, around or through man-made or naturally occurring obstacles by jumping, vaulting and climbing. The activity originated in the Paris suburbs in the 1980s, although pioneers trace its history back to Georges Hébert’s natural method (méthode naturelle), originally a military training method for the French army (Ortuzar, 2009: 61). Parkour has been described variously as sport and art, exhibiting forms and styles that intersect with dance, martial arts and gymnastics. Academic research on parkour has tended to describe how parkour provides a novel way of interacting with the (urban) environment, that challenges the use and meaning of urban space, metropolitan life, and embodiment (see Atkinson, 2009; Ortuzar, 2009). Our study had a broad remit: to understand the social benefits that accrue from participation in parkour3, both for participants and authorities that are investing in infrastructure and the development of the sport. The study took us around the UK. We interviewed young traceurs (n=30) in their own communities at nine different sites and discussed their biographies, aspirations and involvement in efforts to develop the sport locally. However, it soon became apparent that digital media was an important means of communication, connecting participants trans-locally, and for some transnationally. We recorded instances where the use of digital media was central to their participation and involvement in the subculture. Further, we created a repository of websites and media used by the participants to help us to understand the importance of communication technologies within the subculture and the institutionalisation and globalization of the sport. What follows is a brief discussion of our findings about the centrality of digital media to parkour culture. Our discussion focuses on three interrelated themes. First we highlight the way in which blogs and video-sharing websites (e.g. YouTube) are widely credited as growing the transnational popularity of the sport. Second, we explore how, in contrast to the longer-standing lifestyle sport cultures of surfing and climbing, parkour participants predominantly use ‘social software’, communicative and interactive tools (Bruns, 2008), rather than the mix of ‘traditional niche media’ observed in most lifestyle sporting subcultures. Third, we explore how these media are used in parkour for communication, learning about the activity and its culture, as a creative form of performance and self- expression, and a route to possible entrepreneurial activity. The media and the emergence of parkour For much of its existence parkour was an underground activity, conducted in the back streets and plazas of cities and with low participation rates. Many city dwellers were, and still are, unaware of its existence. However, through the media parkour has become an increasingly 3In this chapter we use parkour to refer to the activities of parkour and free-running. We are aware there are important philosophical differences between these two activities, and the cultures that underpin them (see for example discussion in Atkinson (2009) and Wheaton (forthcoming). These differences however do not impact on our discussion of social media use. 5 ubiquitous cultural commodity. Although digital media and online communications are widely credited as central to the growing transnational popularity of the sport (Angel, 2011) it is through traditional media that the original founders and leading protagonists of parkour found a wider audience. Luc Besson, the French filmmaker, initially offered (founding participant) David Belle and his colleagues work in his film Taxi 2 and later produced a film based on the group entitled Yamakasi, les samourai’s des temps modernes, a big budget action film which followed seven traceurs through the banlieue of Paris4. Parkour has been picked up by a range of advertisers (e.g. Nike, Swatch; KSwiss; Canon; Scion cars; Go-Cat). Popstars have been keen to use the urban and athletic spectacle that has characterized its media appropriation. Both Madonna and David Guetta have featured parkour in the music videos for hit singles. Sebastien Foucan, a founder of parkour, featured in the opening chase sequence in Casino Royale (2006) in the James Bond franchise. In the UK the presence of parkour changed overnight by the broadcasting of a documentary, Mike Christie’s Jump London (2003) on Channel 4. The film showcased freerunning through the landmarks of the capital and is widely credited for inspiring a new generation of traceurs. However, media exposure has been a double-edged sword for leading parkour practitioners. It has helped to raise the profile of the sport and opened up commercial opportunities. Yet, as Wilson (2008: 147) reminds us, the media has long played a central role in the “incorporation, mis-representation, and stigmatization” of subcultural groups. Parkour is no exception. The spectacularised media production of the action genre, replaying cultural connotations and encoded meanings in mainstream media products, can atrophy understanding of the sport, popularising unsafe practices which contravene care for the body, self and environment (Archer, 2010; Atkinson, 2009).5 This distortion is a particular concern for coaches who are keen to instill a sense of discipline and risk-management required to perform safely, particularly in a context in which there is no formal regulation or organization of the sport (see Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). Online videos of parkour and freerunning have reputedly led to copycat performances, contributing to deaths as novices attempt moves without due caution or regard for personal wellbeing (‘Roof game kills teen’, The Daily Mirror, 11 August 2005; ‘Parkour investigated in teen’s death’, Sacramento News, 2 November 2008). In Toronto, for example, these reports contributed to moral panics about irresponsible youth in the local media (2004-2006), in which participants were seen as ”disruptive”, and displaying “aggressive tendencies” (Atkinson and Young, 2008a: 68). Commercial news media depictions of parkour as a dangerous activity have contributed to widespread misinformation about the activity, and particularly the degree of risk involved. One interviewee told us: A lot of people just see what’s in the media and they assume that’s what they are going to be doing and it’s just not the case (participant/promoter). Those involved with parkour as educators are acutely aware of these problems. As one sport development officer explained, “You know you get the same old analogies, ‘you are teaching the cat burglars of the future’” (Personal interview). Yet our research has shown that media concerns over risk factors are often exaggerated, and that in some spaces, local authorities, the police, businesses, youth workers, and parents have worked together to find spaces and 4 A full history of the development of parkour is beyond our scope here. For more detail see Atkinson, 2009; Atkinson and Young, 2008; Edwardes, 2007. 5 An attempt to rectify this theme is offered by Julie Angel’s participative ‘shared cinema’ ethnography of parkour (Angel, 2010). 6 programmes that can harness the enthusiasm of local traceurs. These groups are mindful of its potential for ‘positive youth development’ and wider social benefits (see Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). Connecting the tribe Despite the individualistic nature of parkour, traceurs have a strong sense of being part of a local and increasingly transnational collectivity, often referred to as ‘the community’. Research has highlighted how parkour has grown and developed through the use of social software and a participatory online culture (Bavinton, 2007; Saville, 2008). Whereas in lifestyle sport cultures like surfing, commercially produced films, DVDs and magazines remain important ‘organs of communication,’ these are largely sustained by advertising revenue from companies within the surf industry (e.g. clothing, equipment, and travel). However, parkour does not - as yet- have material commodities or equipment to be sold (other than bodies). Unusually, perhaps uniquely in sport subcultures, there is no role and limited market for commercially sustained niche media. In the absence of these more traditional niche media, web based sources have proliferated. Websites developed by professional parkourists and freerunners (e.g. www.urbanfreeflow.com) provide a space for practitioners to share videos and photographs of their performances, offer guides on locations and routes, host articles on techniques and tips for maintaining a healthy body, supply news of coaching opportunities and events, and house international directories of parkour enthusiasts and groups. The use of social software is felt in the lived practice of the parkour subculture. Traceurs use blogs, message boards, websites and Facebook to organize meet-ups, commonly referred to as ‘jams’ (Atkinson, 2009). ‘Jams’ were primarily about meeting new people, sharing styles and techniques, and learning about how to move through new spaces. They align with Maffesoli’s notion of the ‘tribe’, a group without the rigidity of the forms of organization with which we are familiar, it refers more to a certain ambience, a state of mind, and is preferable to be expressed through lifestyles that favour appearance and form (1996: 98). The ‘tribe’ denotes temporal and site-specific gatherings where people with common dispositions and outlooks come together to share interests through informal interactions. We found it was common for traceurs to move around the UK, and further afield, both for jams and longer ‘pilgrimages’ such as to the Paris suburb of Lisses, where parkour originated. Living arrangements were often ‘sleepovers’ in the homes of acquaintances contacted via social networking platforms. Niche media: producers and consumers As detailed above, participants often have ambivalent and contradictory relationships with the media. For some participants involvement in stunt or media work is seen as a ‘sell-out’ and antithetical to the values of responsible, ethical and safe practice inherent in the participative ideology of parkour (Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). However, we should remain cautious in assessing claims that the parkour community have been duped into commodifying the sport into media products for global markets. Reflecting the development of many youth subcultural 7 formations, debates about the degree of incorporation and resistance occurring, increasingly consume parkour (Angel, 2011). As Thornton’s work illustrates, despite the ‘resilient belief’ that ‘grassroots’ or ‘authentic’ subculture resists and struggles with a ‘colonizing mass-mediated corporate world,’ (1995: 116) youth subcultures are formed within and through the media. Likewise, lifestyle sport subcultures such as snowboarders, skaters and windsurfers, are illustrative of the way that the media have become central to the authentication of popular cultural practices, and the complex and shifting relationship to the seemingly co-opting force of global consumer culture (Wheaton, 2007). In these sporting spaces, participants as producers and consumers have a reflexive and dynamic relationship with the subcultural media, which serves as a crucial network in the “definition and distribution of cultural knowledge” and identity (Thornton, 1995: 14). Many traceurs take an active role in producing media content. Armed with the latest mobile video cameras, traceurs have been keen to record their own performances. The availability of cheap and lightweight cameras (GoPros and iPhones) and video editing software has opened up a territory previously controlled by professional photographers, and magazine editors. It would be a misnomer, however, to suggest traceurs are developing a visual and performative aesthetic autonomous from other cultural influences. Other media products and narratives are consumed by traceurs and inform their own products and representations. The Yamakasi group (of parkour founders), for instance, were avid consumers of Japanese anime, manga and Western comics and graphic novels, using the symbolic content to fashion newly constructed senses of self. The incredible action and feats of bravery they observed in the comics fed into reconstituted understandings of identity, self and body, bringing a heightened sense of awareness of being able to push physical limits. As Angel (2011: 30) observes: “The friends’ culture of self-improvement traversed the realms of fantasy and realism, incorporating an active imagination to create new situations and encounters.” Kinaesthetic tropes found within martial arts, comic books, video games and film, can be found in the spectacular presentation of parkour and animate the participative ideologies of some of its participants. Mundane or repetitive movements crucial to the mastery of obstacles are often edited out, to enhance the visual spectacle (Angel, 2011: 93-94). Many short films created by traceurs reproduce tropes key to the film action genre, in particular chase sequences and spectacular moves such as jumping off rooftops. Heroic masculine fantasies are played out, almost always “scripted through with heroic narratives of accomplishment; of highly skilled, mature bodies overcoming the constraints of the environment” (Saville, 2008: 892). Films are uploaded onto video-sharing websites to showcase movements in urban settings, with traceurs often performing character types of the ‘bandit’ or ‘outlaw,’ which encodes and legitimates a version of 'outsider' masculinity amongst often privileged white males (Atencio and Beal, 2011). Thus, in parkour - and reflecting youth subcultural formations more broadly - despite participants’ belief in an ‘authentic’ unique identity, intertextual media-driven relationships inform the practice, production and consumption of the sport. Discussion: new media and lifestyle sport entreprenuerialism Within the evolving cultures of parkour, we argue that YouTube, the world’s most popular video-sharing platform, is having the greatest impact in cultivating the above social interactions. The action footage posted onto this site highlights the physical conditioning required, journeys 8 from apprentice to master, and the endurance, willpower and techniques needed to be proficient in the sport (Stapleton and Terrio, 2010: 5). Yet, YouTube is more than a distribution channel, through videosharing, commenting and communal evaluation features it makes possible the democratization of sport coaching. This platform also has the potential to allow a broader range of voices and expression of subcultural identity to surface. Here we will briefly discuss each of these aspects. Sport coaching has been an important feature of a previous generation of lifestyle sport media, either as moving image DVDs, or in the form of photo sequences with written commentary by the ‘star’ performer. For example, ‘how to do it’ features ranging from beginner techniques to high action photo sequences of manoeuvres, are a central part of surf magazines (Booth, 2008; Wheaton, 2003). However, on YouTube participants provide video evidence that can be commented upon by anyone as a form of peer support and pedagogic intervention. . The two- way interactive elements of YouTube allow for intervention, dialogue and criticism, revealing philosophies and debates about how parkour should be practiced and evaluative commentary on the movements of the participant/performer (see Angel, 2011: 201-2). This is viewed as a positive aspect by participants. One practitioner said: I’ll watch people and pick up their techniques and then put my own onto it. Not be the same but because they’ve done it right, if I watch their technique and pick it up, I’ll just change it a little bit, just to make it my own way but still be the same. Another interviewee, a traceur who had been involved in the sport for 18 months, told us: In freerunning and parkour, it’s your style, how you want to look, how you feel comfortable. That’s what draws the community together. It’s everybody’s individual style. Nobody can be the same as everybody else. By making their performances, style, and movements available on YouTube and personal websites, traceurs are able to reach an audience directly, able to market themselves and build a following or fanbase. This is in marked contrast to the ways in which media power operates in off-line niche medias, where various gatekeepers (photographers, sponsors, journalists, and magazine editors) operate to control who is included and excluded from the magazine content. The videos confirm the importance of style and distinction to lifestyle sport subcultures, separating individuals from each other and from variants of the sport. Videos convey subcultural status and authenticity (Wheaton and Beal, 2003) and signal forms of status and symbolic power crucial to the professionalization of the sport. However, like the status hierarchies in more traditional sporting fields, power in the parkour field is contested. James, a parkour coach and director of a leading training organization based in London, told us there is a particular concern with parkour-related Internet forums: Forums are run by people who think they know all about the history of the art and the philosophy of the art, but actually when it comes down to it they really don’t live it, they just write about it a lot…same in all disciplines, anyone that spends all their time on Internet forums clearly does not understand what he is doing. Here James reveals the politics of authenticity underpinning the parkour field; that is, like most other lifestyle sports, authentic identity is doing and the inauthentic is consuming (Rinehart, 9 2000; Thorpe, 2011b). Evidently, and as other self-defined ‘real’ traceurs also claimed, those who spend their time on forums are not ‘real’ traceurs. Traceurs with high levels of physical capital have become elevated in the parkour subculture. They have proved themselves by mastering different levels of ability, cultivating an individual style, or through displays of skilled bodily performance. An internal hierarchy and charismatic culture operates to structurally elevate certain individuals. Some are elevated through their pedagogical reputation – an ability to preach, teach and educate others about their own style and philosophy, whilst others claim a social status by managing to attract commercial opportunities. In some cases it is a combination of both, signaling that power can accrue from work in the cultural industries and from the wider sporting economy. Our interviewees spoke of the seductive cosmopolitan lifestyles available to the proficient and media savvy traceur. As one interviewee said: Where I see myself going is teaching and performing full-time. So, going around not only the UK but the world, around the world delivering sessions and performing everywhere. That’s where I see it going. If we keep up the hard work we could be doing that kind of thing. The connection is clear: hard work will translate into global opportunities. Many freerunners we interviewed spoke of being inspired by Tim ‘Livewire’ Shieff, a freerunner from Derbyshire, England, who won the 2009 Barclaycard World Freerun Championships. His profile on the Storm Freerun site (www.stormfreerun) lists his vital statistics and signature parkour moves, and under ‘work’ a brief biography gives details of worldwide travel, corporate engagements and performances in the presence of royalty and celebrities. A video reel plays on the site to emphasise his media appearances and connections, showing his ease in front of camera as a performer for chat shows, news items, events, film, and music videos. The websites of aspirant professional traceurs and freerunners display important narratives of mobility, both of the physical body and the transitions the participant can make from the local to the global in forging a career from transnational cultural industries. The content emphasizes travel, money, exposure, celebrity, and new friendships. As Thorpe observes, though in the context of professional transnational snowboarders, “It creates a compelling mythology for many cultural participants” (Thorpe, 2011a: 117). It is also noticeable that many websites of the leading traceurs in the world marginalize class and nationality as markers of identity, social difference and affiliation. It is more common to view outsider identities that utilize the semiotics of heroic rebels or urban warriors (Stapleton and Terrio, 2010: 7), suggesting alternate transnational (urban) commonalities. The websites give important clues to the mobile lives of the ‘borderless athlete’ and the social identities of the traceur as transnational citizen and entrepreneur. These are men (very rarely women) who lead highly mobile lives, leaving traces of their business activities and performances in informational space, and who shift to new opportunities as the market demands. For example, 3-Run, a group of freerunners based in the south of England, market their services with a distinct cosmopolitan flavour. They practice a more performance-oriented version of parkour that combines acrobatics, gymnastics and tricking. Their slick website highlights an aim to be the world’s leading parkour and freerunning team. In this quest they have worked on Casino Royale, developed award winning commercials for Microsoft Xbox, and set a number of Guinness World 10 Records in front of TV cameras. A page on their site (www.3run.co.uk) gives ‘the story’ and includes a montage of photos that includes a sign for Cape Town, a wallet opened revealing several travel tickets, and a passport with the words ‘Life is an adventure – explore the world’ positioned around it. Other photos show bare-chested members posing in exotic locations; their bodies framed by seascapes and mountain backdrops. It is this sense of freedom, accomplishment and becoming that proved so seductive to the young men we interviewed throughout the UK. For instance, the website of a parkour group from the English Midlands (www.leicesterparkour.co.uk) contains a short one minute video clip of performances and training “that gives a small insight into how hard we’ve worked to get to where we are today.” A short chronology of activity is situated underneath emphasizing their humble beginnings from a “group of young lads practicing a past time they love” to local performances, development of the brand, training and coaching others, to the acquiring of professional qualifications, constructing of a purpose-built park, and the formation of a social enterprise. They were keen to impress upon us that parkour had no limits. They had started with nothing and had achieved a material product (their own purpose-built park) and regional reputation. Whilst some of the group spoke of potential local investments to be made from their endeavors - for example, owning and running a gym - others were keen to express a desire to globetrot, and to inspire others with their moves. Conclusions Digital media play a central role in lifestyle sport subcultures. They offer new, low cost and high speed opportunities for subcultural groups to communicate, and to create and sustain online and real time participant networks from the local to the trans-national level. We may celebrate the uptake of YouTube by lifestyle sports participants as an example of ‘mass self- communication’ (Castells, 2009), where the participant has the potential to reach large audiences whilst retaining control of production through the self-generation of content. Our parkour case study illustrates that new technologies are enabling lifestyle sports participants to convert seemingly peripheral cultural activities into wider cultural value. Physical capital becomes cultural and economic capital within and outside the parkour field. YouTube channels and personal websites distribute the athletic and media proficiency of the participant/performer, and act as pathways to entrepreneurialism and social mobility by signaling an intention to undertake commercial work opportunities. As Bloustien (2007) notes, young peoples’ use of convergent media forms can bring to the fore new agencies, rendering distinctions between public and private self, production and consumption, work and leisure, increasingly blurred (see also Ravenscroft and Gilchrist, 2009). Young people are able to draw upon their social networking and collaboration skills to develop an empowered ‘sense of self’ and fashion self-fulfilling careers and opportunities (Bloustien, 2007: 451-452). It remains an open question as to how far the adoption of digital media technologies is truly transforming lifestyle sport subcultures. It is evident that many of the power inequalities chronicled in the traditional sporting niche media are also reproduced in digital media settings. As we have illustrated, climbing, surfing and parkour media continue to reinforce the hegemonic position of the heroic Western white male adventurer subjectivity (Farley, 2005). Women and non-white men are pushed to the peripheries as playful white masculinities are recurrently represented in mediated spaces (Frohlick, 2005). There is a need to be cautious about the degree to which online media spaces subvert or disrupt subcultural representations 11 and identities. Despite claims, for instance, that surfing has become a ‘girl friendly space’ (Comer, 2010), DVDs, magazines and films remain male dominated, and still reproduce the gendered and racialised stereotypes, “associated with privileged forms of whiteness” (Comer, 2010: 21). Comer’s revealing discussion of the global surf industries “penchant for blondes” ‘reveals a ‘politics of blondness’ where the preferred female figure is the ‘global California girl’. Those who do not fit this image have tended to remain on the periphery. Within parkour, similar questions can be raised about the presence of women in the user-generated films and documentaries, which tend to depict traceurs as anti-heroes and outlaws, cultural archetypes that do not necessarily aid more inclusive forms of representation of physical achievement. Online media platforms certainly provide opportunities for the subaltern voice and experience, and the possibility for scripts that challenge the dominant discourses of gender, race, sexuality and dis/ability. Porter (2003), for example, explores the emergence of a wide-range of Internet forums for female skaters, skate zines, and all-girls competitions, which challenge dominant discourses of skateboarding and masculinity. In parkour too, participants expressed a genuine desire to be inclusive, and to provide ‘real’ and mediated space for female participants (Wheaton, forthcoming). For example, one group of teenage male traceurs made provision for female participants on their website, despite the reality that there were no local female participants. In surfing, too, a cursory trawl through surfing related web materials illustrates the broad range of surfing experiences being promoted (e.g. groups for female surfers, surfing mums, silver surfers, indigenous surfers, gay surfers, surfers with disabilities, political surfing movements, and a broad range of environmental protests groups). Furthermore, independent and some commercially produced documentary films are challenging the dominant histories, and myths about the surfing culture and history, including representations of ‘race’ and gender (see, for example, Nike’s 12 Miles North (Yelland 2012) and Whitewash (2011), a film that explores ‘the complexity of race in America through the struggle and triumph of the history of black surfers’). Within these media spaces, multiple and competing discourses of femininity and masculinity are produced, discourses that are also reflective of the complex shifting identities evident in contemporary short-board surf culture (see Waitt, 2008). In sum, whilst networked digital media has transformed some of the practices and cultures of lifestyle sport, we retain a sociological scepticism and sobering sense of historical perspective over how far this is a profound and empowering development. 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