Public Pedagogy of Healthy Living: A Thematic Analysis of Social Media Posts about Obesity, Physical Activity, and Diet

Abstract

Background. There has been growing interest among scholars to examine public discourses concerning obesity, physical activity (PA), and diets during the last couple of decades. Some of these studies appear to counter-discourse that identifies the take-ups of obesity as a ‘health problem’ to be socially and morally problematic. Objectives. The purpose of this study was to critically analyze social media posts on obesity as they intersected with PA and diets. Methods. The current study was social media research employing big data analytics followed by a qualitative method. The data collection process took several stages. First, we created a set of terms commonly used to describe obesity and overweight, including laymen’s words in the big data analytical machine. The second stage of data collection involved qualitative data which we sampled from machine learning. Data analysis included strategies to describe demographic characteristics and the sentiments of the posts were performed by big data analytics through natural language processing (NLP) algorithms. We further analyzed the qualitative data through six steps of thematic analysis. Results. The analysis resulted in the development of three major themes. First, it clustered around the characteristics of social media users as the public of the public pedagogy under investigation along with the inactions of that pedagogy through social media. The second theme includes the meanings of healthy bodies as socially constructed through posts regarding body weight. The last theme revolved around discourses about the resolution of unhealthy bodies, especially through PA and diets. Conclusion. We conclude that social media is extensive in spreading out messages concerning living a healthy life. This becomes a discursive process of constructing what constitutes a healthy body and how to resolve undesirable bodies. The roles of authorities are also central in producing the discourse. Therefore, authorities should carefully examine all possible consequences of the health messages being circulated in the community while conclusive understanding has not been achieved yet. Because the impacts on our society could be profound, in ways through which social injustice could be reproduced through negative stigmatization that is based on body size