Digital Wellness, Health and Fitness Influencers: Critical Perspectives on Digital Guru Media

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.

Stefan Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in socio-cultural aspects of sport and leisure at Newman University, Birmingham, UK and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He sits on the Executive Committee of the Leisure Studies Association, Editorial Board of Managing Sport and Leisure, Assistant Editorial Board of Leisure Sciences and Associate Editorial Board of Leisure Studies Journal. He is also Expert Evaluator to the European Commission’s ’Citizens, Equality, Rights and Value’ (CERV) Programme.