Types of discourse disseminated by food influencers: Trends on Instagram in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This research examines the discourse of nutrition influencers on Instagram within five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) during 2021. The research aims to analyse the visual and textual content disseminated by these influencers and compare the predominant narratives among them. The corpus consists of 98 food influencers, and computer vision networks were employed to analyse visual discourse, linguistic analysis software for text analysis, and quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse hashtags. While promoting global trends (such as vegetable juices or bowls made with natural and unprocessed cereals, nuts, and fruits) to a lesser extent, influencers from the five countries highlight traditional food from their respective cultures in their visual discourse. The predominant discourse in all countries promotes the need for physical change through exercise and nutrition, sometimes fostering a diet culture. Sports and fitness are present in the discourse of influencers from these five countries, predominantly emphasising weight loss, muscle gain, and sports training with specific diets. Sports plays a significant role, with a preponderance of photographs depicting physical transformations and the promotion of food products and sports brands through inspiring images. Spain stands out in this regard as having the most images showing physical changes, especially in women. Although no evidence has been discovered to suggest that the sponsorship of unhealthy foods affects consumers’ preferences for them, the results show the widespread promotion of diet-related goods and foods. Notably, the real food movement was not emphasized in this extensive data analysis.