Mapping Digital Wellness Content

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of wellness on social media, there islittle empirical study of its content or audiences. This study providesdescriptive information of prevalent themes in wellness content and thecomposition and views of its audiences. Using structural topic modeling toidentify central themes #wellness content on Instagram (N = 544,377posts), we find that while much content appears to promote desired healthbehaviors (e.g., quality sleep), other topics concern unsubstantiated claimsthat are often driven by commercial incentives. Nationally representativesurvey data of U.S. adults (N = 970) further reveals that women, moreliberal, and younger people are more likely to seek and see wellnesscontent. Those who actively seek wellness content are both more trustingof science institutions and have less accurate health beliefs compared withthose who are inadvertently exposed to wellness content. Though wellnesshas not received a great deal of scholarly attention, this description shedslight on the relevance of wellness to central questions in communicationdisciplines concerning expertise, (mis)information, and institutional trust. The popularity of wellness content in social media merits further empiricalexamination as such content may have important benefits and harms thatdisproportionately affect women and young people.