From Tracks to Texts: Gender Representation in Instagram Captions of Running Influencers

The intersection of digital media and fitness culture has positioned social media influencers as key agents in shaping gendered self-representations. Within the UK's amateur running community, Instagram micro-influencers (users with 10,000-100,000 followers) are increasingly influential in promoting narratives of health, identity, and performance. While visual content often dominates scholarly analysis of social media, the caption-an essential site for discursive self-presentation-remains underexplored, particularly in relation to gender. Moreover, existing literature has disproportionately focused on female influencers and visual aesthetics, leaving male narratives and linguistic framing comparatively overlooked. This study investigates how British amateur female and male running influencers construct gendered identities through language in Instagram captions. The research asks: How do British amateur female and male running influencers differ in the ways they use language in Instagram captions to express and frame gendered identities in running-related content? Drawing from Social Role Theory (Eagly & Wood, 2012) and Framing Theory (Goffman, 1974), the study examines how influencers express communal traits (e.g., empathy, relationality) and agentic traits (e.g., competitiveness, self-discipline), as well as how gendered meanings are structured through narrative and emotional framing. A thematic analysis was conducted on 500 captions from 50 UK-based micro-influencers (24 female, 26 male), using a theory-driven codebook. Data collection combined homogeneous and snowball sampling strategies, ensuring relevance and diversity within the niche of recreational running. Analysis was facilitated through ATLAS.ti software, with codes clustered into broader thematic categories reflecting both traditional and hybrid gender norms. Findings indicate that male influencers predominantly adopt agentic frames emphasizing goal-setting, resilience, and performance metrics, closely aligning with hegemonic masculinity. Female influencers more frequently employ communal and emotionally expressive frames, emphasizing gratitude, community support, and holistic well-being. However, notable instances of hybridity emerge: some female influencers foreground competitive ambition and physical strength, while certain male influencers express vulnerability and relational values. Gender role reinforcement is significantly more prevalent in female-authored captions, often manifesting through hashtags and self-descriptors that reaffirm traditional femininity, even within narratives of athletic competence. The study contributes to digital media and gender scholarship by foregrounding the textual dimension of influencer self-presentation. It offers new insights into how gender is linguistically negotiated in fitness spaces and highlights the cultural work done by micro-influencers in sustaining or challenging normative ideals. These findings hold broader implications for understanding the gendered dynamics of authenticity, audience engagement, and identity performance in digital fitness culture.