The Fitness victory? An essay on the symbolic violence surrounding healthy eating on social media

Abstract

This essay offers a theoretical reflection on the new forms of symbolic violence emerging from the relationship between users of digital social networks and health professionals—both platformized—on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Platformization is understood as a diffuse and qualitative transformation of various sectors of life, such as health, education, and communication, resulting from the incorporation of digital platform logics and, consequently, the practices of health professionals. It is argued that the practices of platformized health professionals hybridize traditional biomedical values with those of digital social networks. Thus, the platformization of health professionals occurs not only within the traditional sphere of reproducing bodily control but is also intertwined with digital strategies of entertainment, subjectivation, and product commercialization. These dynamics reverberate in new forms of symbolic violence exerted upon audiences, normalizing epistemic, aesthetic, hedonic, algorithmic, and moral standards. It is argued that understanding this scenario of the digitalization of individuals and groups engaged with healthy eating in online environments requires a critical and interdisciplinary approach that considers the social, cultural, and political effects of the mediatization of healthy eating within the field of public health.