Rethinking the ‘wellness influencer’: medical doctors, lifestyle expertise and the question of credentials

O'Neill, Rachel (2025) Rethinking the ‘wellness influencer’: medical doctors, lifestyle expertise and the question of credentials. International Journal of Cultural Studies. ISSN 1367-8779

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Abstract

Medical doctors are central to existing networks for wellness content on Instagram in and beyond the UK, yet remain overlooked within scholarship concerned with this terrain. Taking a case study approach, this article examines three such figures prominent in the UK context. In doing so, it challenges existing conceptualisations of the ‘wellness influencer’ and argues for an expanded understanding of the category, one that does not assume its representatives are ‘lay’ persons without recognised expertise in health and well-being. The analysis developed demonstrates that credentials cannot resolve the problems associated to wellness influencing as a genre and, as such, the entry of medical doctors to the ranks of social media celebrity may not be the ‘fix’ it is often imagined to be. Ultimately, I argue that medically qualified wellness influencers extend doctors’ role in the ‘regulation of lifestyle’, and make the case for attending to their ideological operations.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine H Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	29 Nov 2024 10:57
Last Modified:	14 Jan 2025 16:27
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/126201

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