Hälsa, vad är det? : En kvantitativ och kvalitativ undersökning av inlägg på Instagram under #hälsa

Sammanfattning: The popular photo sharing app, Instagram, was founded six years ago and is now one of the largest and fastest growing social media-apps in Sweden. A few years ago a health trend blossomed on Instagram and almost everyone wants to share and show their healthy lifestyle today. Previous studies show that a lot of people feel stressed over this constant exposure to other peoples health-related topics. But what is health? What does it mean to be healthy? Who decides that? The purpose of this thesis is to explore Instagram messages (picture and text) with hashtag (#)hälsa (health) to see which topics that dominate and the norms that govern what these messages should look like to be accepted. The study builds on social constructionism and proceeds into the world of discourse analysis with Faircloughs critical discourse analysis as main focus. It is also supplemented with Foucault's theories of power and self-control, and Goffman's theory of the presentation of self. At first a quantitative content analysis where made so the material would be easier to handle and overview. Then a critical discourse analysis where made to gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the material. The main results of the study concluded that there is no single definition of health, the definition depends on the context. Further the analysis revealed four dominant discourses with #hälsa: food, fitness, body change and well-being, and all these discourses produced different meanings of health. The study also discovered norms that influence the content with #hälsa on Instagram and shows how users, based on these norms, shape and create there identity. Finally the study revealed that it does not really matter if users are healthy, as long as they produce an image of them self of being healthy, they will be healthy in the eyes of others.