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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Political Participation
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1414795

Becoming activists: How young athletes use visual tools for civic action and meaning-making within participatory research

Provisionally accepted
Daniel Vieira Daniel Vieira 1,2Teresa Silva Dias Teresa Silva Dias 1,2Marta Sampaio Marta Sampaio 1,2Sofia Castanheira Pais Sofia Castanheira Pais 1,2Norberto De Sousa Ribeiro Norberto De Sousa Ribeiro 1,2Cosmin Nada Cosmin Nada 1,2Carla Malafaia Carla Malafaia 1,2*
  • 1 University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
  • 2 Department of Education sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Education Science, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    How can participatory research, combined with visual methods, enable young people to grow as engaged citizens in their communities? The literature on young people's political participation has been marked by two recurrent pleas: i) the importance of participatory research practices, capable of activating conditions for young people to grow as engaged citizens in their communities; ii) the need of recognizing the changing modes of young people's engagement, increasingly performative and non-conventional. This article introduces an innovative methodological design that draws on a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) approach with 33 young athletes aged 11 to 16 from two different educational settings. Based on both observation notes from the community profiling process and visual materials produced by the young people throughout that process, we analyze how they become activists, taking sports as the ground for mobilization and intervention in their communities. Specifically, we examine the visual activist strategies and the visual meaning-making representations that resulted from young people's engagement in participatory research. Novel findings include the realization that young people with no previous experience in activism strongly prefer visual and performative formats of participation, often in connection with digital and online arenas. Additionally, data analyses reveal that participants particularly value collective moments of learning, negotiation, and preparation of activist actions. This article highlights the increasing prevalence of visual-oriented modes of civic engagement and the potential of participatory methodologies in fostering critical awareness, meaningful decision-making, and a sense of agency among young people.

    Keywords: youth participatory action research, visual activism, Civic engagement, Community profiling, political participation

    Received: 09 Apr 2024; Accepted: 07 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Vieira, Silva Dias, Sampaio, Pais, Ribeiro, Nada and Malafaia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Carla Malafaia, Department of Education sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Education Science, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.