Perspectives of Adolescents on Developing Gender Role Attitudes in Relation to Their Online Practices Within the ‘Boef’ Community

Abstract

In an attempt to gather insights into points of view toward gender role attitude development in relation to online practices within the Boef community, a qualitative study was carried out in which data was collected among seventeen adolescents between thirteen and twenty-one years old. In order to create a clear and accurate perspective on these points of view, the main research question was divided into two sub-questions: one focusing on the masculine gender role, the other on the feminine gender role. For each sub-question, data was collected by means of conducting semi-structured interviews and organizing focus groups. Subsequently, NVivo was used to perform a content analysis (Boeije, 2010) which resulted in three main themes and multiple subthemes: attitudes toward gender roles in general, attitudes toward gender roles in relation to Boef, and perspectives on how online practices within the Boef community relate to developing gender role attitudes. The results of this study have led to the conclusion that there appeared to be a resemblance between attitudes toward gender roles in general and attitudes toward gender roles in relation to Boef. For instance, regarding both attitudes, masculinity was linked to behavior only; whereas femininity was mainly linked with features of appearance. However, also remarkable differences were found within the specifics of the descriptions. In addition, the results of this research suggest that adolescents are capable of choosing between different attitudes towards femininity. Moreover, adolescents perceive Boef as a social media celebrity who is able to show them an example of how to become popular and successful. Lastly, features of online platforms seem to provide adolescents with new insights on their attitudes toward gender roles. For instance, respondents described how they use examples on social media to model their own attitudes.