Social media influencers play an increasingly important role in shaping people’s perceptions and behaviours related to health, fitness, diet, wellbeing and lifestyle. Their posts may encourage particular health-related behaviours, while the motivations and commercial interests behind such content may not always be transparent.
This project will explore how influencer content may affect people’s health-related attitudes and behaviours, and the factors that may drive the creation and promotion of such content. These factors could include advertising and sponsorship, revenue generation, audience engagement, personal branding and platform incentives.
The project could combine analysis of publicly available influencer content with user perspectives to investigate relationships between content characteristics, influencer motivations, commercial interests and reported health-related behaviour.
Key Areas:
- Social media and influencer culture
- Health-related behaviour
- Content and sentiment analysis
- AI/machine learning
- Human-centred computing
- Digital marketing and platform economics
- User behaviour and engagement
Potential Outcome:
A prototype analytical approach or system for examining influencer health-related content and its potential relationship with audience behaviour, providing insights into what health messages are promoted, how they are presented, and the interests and incentives that may influence the content.