The Ranch Malibu: Operationalizing Wellness Tourism on TikTok

Abstract

To examine how social media influencers aid in the growth of the wellness industry while simultaneously reifying dangerous existing ideologies, we conducted a thematic analysis of TikTok videos created by a social media influencer during her time at a popular wellness tourism retreat known as The Ranch Malibu. In the findings, we outline how wellness tourism discourse promotes extreme dieting, the moralization of health, and elitism, all outcomes in line with previous studies explicating the dangers of both contemporary and historical wellness rhetoric. We argue that the sharing of wellness tourism content on social media platforms results in the spread of dangerous beliefs alongside health misinformation at a much faster pace than in decades prior. Therefore, we encourage communication scholars to examine wellness tourism discourse on social media platforms as a novel research area within the growing fields of digital health communication, rhetoric of health and wellness, and public health.