"Unlock a better life: Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances

Abstract

Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession. Drawing from a one-month observation of 1,650 posts collected from 20 Instagram profiles of life coaches, our analysis provides insight into how these professionals strategically display and integrate cultural practices, tastes, and preferences that align with neoliberal ideals of self-improvement and self-responsibility to set themselves apart as experts within their field. They then use this distinctiveness as a marketing technique, thereby feeding off their cultural and social capital, among others by rationalizing their expertise by appealing to their own experiences, embedding client testimonials, and driving the narrative by combining hashtags or images that refer to self-entrepreneurism, self-responsibility, and the good life. We reflect on the potentially harmful implications of these legitimization techniques on individuals and society.