Identity

Samantha Quon

Health and Wellness Identities on Social Media

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Samantha Quon is a fourth year student in the Professional Communication program. During her time at TMU she was dedicated to learning how to craft public relations written materials and manage journalistic projects for online outlets. She has also pursued studies in user experience design for a variety of multimodal platforms. After her undergraduate education, she intends to enter a career in public relations, specifically within the sustainability sector to combine her interests in environmental design with her academic communication experience.

This research examines how identities surrounding health and wellness are created and reinforced on social media. Focusing on TikTok creators who share routine focused content centred on health, the following explores how a healthy identity is constructed within specific short form videos. The concept of healthism, defined by Crawford (1980), guides the analysis by considering how social media content may frame health as a moralistic individual behaviour, where solutions rest solely within an individual’s choice to maintain a healthy lifestyle, despite external or internal challenges. This study conducts a multimodal content analysis of short form TikTok videos within a qualitative design.

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