Transforming scandal: the 'St Kilda Schoolgirl', digital media activism and social change

Abstract

Between May 2010 and March 2011, a sex scandal involving members of the St Kilda Football Club, other AFL stakeholders and a young woman was played out in both traditional media and online sites. The scandal involved claims of pregnancy to a player, the online distribution of nude and sexual images of several footballers, and an affair with a much older player-manager. This article examines the series of incidents comprising the scandal with a view to demonstrating that the young woman’s use of digital media not only allowed her to maintain a media focus on herself as complainant rather than through the traditional victim narrative of sex scandals, but that her actions can be read as a tactical form of digital media activism over gender relations in the celebrity social world of Australian Rules Football.