Full-Time Side Hustle: The Position and Production of Fitness Influencer and Creators on Instagram

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to understand who gets to be a social media Influencer or content creator within the fitness industry, as well as the strategies they use and the content they produce. As new forms of celebrity proliferate online through the use of information communication technologies, there is a parallel growth in the health and fitness industry, with fitness Influencers and creators at the crossroads. Relying on a mixed-methods approach of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and a rhetorical analysis of the Instagram fitness genre, this dissertation argues that social stratification among fitness Influencers and creators shapes their beliefs, strategies, and forms of production on social media. What fitness Influencers and creators believed investments would do for them depended on their position within, or outside of, the fitness industry, which was often shaped by aspects of their lives such as education, employment, gender, and family or social support. Similarly, the strategies invested in by fitness Influencers and creators varied primarily according to their occupational trajectory, with those looking to create full-time careers in the fitness industry willing to adopt more market rationalized strategies than those who approached social media as a hobby. Lastly, in mapping the genre ecology of Instagram fitness, this dissertation shows how the historically inherited genre of fitness interacts with the features and affordances of Instagram to shape how fitness Influencers and creators use the platform to produce content. These findings have applications for those studying social media Influencers and celebrity as well as scholars of communication and technology. For the former, this dissertation provides new insight into how to organize an analysis of the diversity of people who become Influencers and creators, offering social position as one answer. For the latter, this dissertation uses genre to help explain what shapes the perception of certain sociotechnical features and affordances of information communication technologies.