Fitness influencers and body positivity in Italy A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis on how body positivity is represented by fitness influencers on Instagram during the pandemic

In March 2020, Italy entered a long and challenging lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Italian citizens were suddenly forced to change their habits and spend their days locked in their homes without the opportunity of going outside. Consequently, the time consumed by individuals on social media, particularly on Instagram, has increased significantly. Furthermore, isolation and social distancing had considerable repercussions on the perception of body image in women who relied on fitness influencers to be able to continue exercising in their homes. For this reason, fitness influencers were found to be among the influencers with the highest growth in followers proving to be a fundamental resource for the Italian government to spur individuals to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Thus, Covid-19 has further increased the need to spread body-positive messages. Indeed, body positivity addresses the acceptance and inclusiveness of all bodies, challenges Western beauty standards, and fights for a more diverse representation of bodies on social media. As a result, given the importance of the body positivity movement on Instagram and the negative effects of the pandemic on body image, this research investigated how fitness influencers represented body positivity on Instagram during the pandemic in Italy. To achieve the final goal, a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of 75 Instagram posts and 55 Instagram Reels shared by three Italian fitness influencers was conducted. The analysis was guided by the sensitizing concepts regarding the elements of body positivity, fitspiration, thinspiration, and self-presentation. These notions helped reveal the 4 main themes of the research: focus on inside well-being, heed of one's body, raising awareness of social stereotypes, and depictions of the ideal female body. Therefore, it was concluded that Italian fitness influencers represent body positivity primarily through the inner well-being given by a positive mindset, encouraging self-care activities to improve personal health, and denouncing social stereotypes in favor of accepting bodies and loving their functionality. Overall, the influencers' posts are in line with body positivity ideals. However, they do not represent different body types but conventional bodies that might have a negative impact on women's well-being since they conform to Western beauty norms. Additionally, the findings suggest that influencers mainly adopt a self-presentation strategy based on simple and natural communication to appear more authentic to users and communicate more sensitively in a controversial period. Given the importance of influencers in today's society, future research could benefit from this study by investigating how the content of fitness influencers is perceived by users.