This book examines the phenomenon of ‘digital guru media’ (DGM), the self-styled online influencers, life coaches, experts and entrepreneurs who post on the themes of wellness, health and fitness.
It opens up new perspectives on digital leisure and internet celebrity culture, and asks important questions about the social, cultural and psychological implications of our contemporary relationship with digital media. Drawing on cutting-edge social theory, the book explores a wide range of contexts in which DGM intersects with digital leisure, from the health-related learning of young people to the ‘clean eating’ movement, to the online lives of fitness professionals. It asks if digital and social media are problematic per se and explores the problems a turn to the Internet could be revealing about the lack of real-world or analogue support, as well as potential solutions, for our wellness, health and fitness needs and wants.
Bringing together innovative, multi-disciplinary perspectives, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in leisure studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, or health and society.
Author(s): Stefan Lawrence
Series: Routledge Critical Leisure Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 233
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. I Am Not Your Guru: Situating Digital Guru Media Amidst the Neoliberal Imperative of Self-Health Management and the ‘Post-Truth’ Society
2. Panic Fitness in Claustropolitan Times: Les Mills, Zombie Leisure and Deterritorialization
3. The Appearance of Authority in Health and Wellbeing Media: Analyzing Digital Guru Media through Lacan’s ‘big Other’
4. Personal Science and the Quantified Self Guru
5. Just a New Slant on a Very Old Story? Digital Guru Media Seen Through an Evolutionary Lens
6. Fitness Influencers and Their Digital Communities: Kayla Itsines and the (Re)Making of Fit Femininity
7. Digital Media and the Promotion of a Clean Eating Lifestyle: From ‘Glowing Femininities’ to ‘Skinny Privilege’
8. Fitness Trainers Perceptions of Social Media: I’m a Fitness Professional, Not an Influencer
9. Swoldiers in the Swoldier Nation: YouTube Fitness Vlogs and the Performance of Mental Health, Strength, and Happiness on Social Media
10. Young People, Social Media and Health: A Pedagogical Perspective on Influencers
11. ‘Do You Love Me?’ Virtual Sincerity and the Cyberspaces of Wonder in Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files
12. Digital Guru Media for Self-Health Management and Wellbeing: The Good, the Bad, and the Pragmatic Strategies for Improvement
Index
