The main objective of this study was to analyze whether information from main IG Brazilian influencers, who disseminate information related to exercise and health fields have technical-scientific support. Our main finding is that most IG influencers provide inaccurate information, as indicated by the lack of posts supported by a scientific reference. From the 495 analyzed posts, only 13 (~ 2.7%) cited a reference that actually endorsed its information. Moreover, even though the influencers have an academic/professional degree, their accounts presented a quality score as low as 23%. Nevertheless, these post´s misinformation directly reaches a large audience of about 30 million people. Thus, this study provides evidence that main Brazilian IG influencers related to exercise and health share low-quality information, deficient in scientific support, even though the influencers have an academic/professional qualification.
It is important to highlight that ~ 75% of the investigated IG influencers have a formal academic/professional background, which supposedly capacitate them to prescribe guidelines, and, most importantly, to discern the possible negative effects of pervasiveness of the posted information on the health of the followers. Misinformation may refer to false and inaccurate information that can be deliberately or naively designed to deceive the intended recipients9. Interestingly, all the administrators of the accounts evaluated herein shared at least one information beyond the scope of their academic/professional qualification. This intrusion is possibly one factor that contributed to the low-quality of the posts, as well as the low-quality score obtained by the accounts.
Regarding the quality of the posted information about exercise and health by main Brazilian influencers, data from this study revealed that the minority of them were supported by a scientific reference (13 from 495). Such finding points to the direction that the account´s administrator opinion, experience or even personal or business marketing are preferentially shared on their accounts, instead of scientifically consistent information. It is to believe that if the post is grounded by any type of reference, such as a study published in a scientific journal or a book, its content becomes much more trustworthy, supposedly increasing the credibility of the transmitted information. However, a critical concern about the use of these scientific references was raised in the present study, since only 13 posts cited scientific references indeed endorsing its information. Moreover, 82 posts referred to a reference that did not corroborate the shared information, while 400 posts did not even refer to any reference, and 217 posts could have been supported by a scientific reference but the influencers omitted themselves from citing it. All these characteristics directly contributed to the low-quality score obtained by the accounts, as indicated by the positive correlation between the academic/professional qualification of the account´s administrator and the quality of the posts. Moreover, the last two aspects mentioned above seemingly suggest that either the administrators claim something completely distorted from the reasoning of the reference (for example, share an information about exercise, but cite a scientific reference about supplements) nor do they care to share a reliable information with their followers at all. The reason why so many of these popular influencers risk their credibility by sharing not scientifically based information is a matter a debate; however, the financial benefit of promoting a fake solution or product should be taken into account.
The events mentioned above ultimately support misinformation dissemination as it reaches a large audience, generating an apprehension due to its implications to the public10. This is reinforced by the fact that the global impact of SMP became large among the population2, and, therefore, the information provided by its platforms can directly influence the daily routine of a great amount of people2,4. By following a particular influencer, users may find themselves copying their habits, as well as adopting their advices on a daily basis8. It should be also mentioned that IG provides a sharing option from the original source, using another specific smartphone app. Therefore, the number of people who have access to a single misinformation can increase exponentially, in the case of this study, up to more than 30 million people.
Another aggravating is the negative correlation observed between the number of followers and the influencer´s qualification and the quality of the posts, which means that the less qualified, the more followers the influencer has, and lesser is the veracity of the posts. This evidence points to the direction that the misinformation divulgated by the influencers about exercise and health may negatively impact the quality of life of a great amount of people, leading to a detrimental behavior6. For instance, unsupervised physical exercise practice can lead to musculoskeletal injuries11, and exacerbated Fitspiration promulgation may provoke dietary disturbances (bulimia and vigorexia) and mental disorders (depression and chronic anxiety)6. One curiosity is that ~ 44% of the posts shared information that was scientifically proven to be viable to execute and useful for the general public but the influencer was not careful enough to cite a reference do endorse it. This data leads to the believe that users may estimate and give credit to an influencer greatly because of his/her public image as a celebrity and/or athletic body shape, for example, instead of a trusted source. This also suggest that image is one of the main tools of IG. IG also allows users to like and comment on others’ posts. At the time of data collection, IG still published the number of views and likes of the posts, which allowed us to make a more consistent descriptive-quantitative analysis. After discussions over the impact of the likes and followers feature on users’ social problems and mental health, IG hid the visualization of theses parameters, even though the usernames of people who have liked the post has remained on display12. Herein, the posts presented an overall average of 8.597 likes and/or views, which is also considered an important parameter of their influence over people. Regardless of the format, all posts received a considerable amount of likes and/or views, even those posts that predominately were images containing only written text. In fact, IG popularity among users is largely attributed to the emphasis on visual content that has been proven to be more appealing to the audience5. This is one important aspect since the attractive of SMP are quite based on a commercial point of view once most of the posts approaches fitness full-body, healthy eating, active exerciser and sexualization7. Particularly when dealing with knowledge areas that print a concept of aesthetics, such type of posts usually calls more attention of the public, but take the focus off the main information and detract from the critical sense about it.
Within the four knowledge areas evaluated in this study, the most usual ones were those related to body-shaped image, i.e. nutrition and physical fitness. More specifically, informative posts about nutrition and teaching posts about physical fitness were the most frequently shared. As indicated by the number of likes and/or views, the follower’s interests were mainly focused on comments about nutrition and explanations, descriptions and/or general information about physical fitness. These findings prove that Fitspiration is a relevant topic of great appreciation.
Although we have provided a descriptive analysis, it was not possible to identify the so-called fake followers (ghost followers purchased from third-party providers). In addition, the number of likes and comments can be manipulated with the help of automated chat bots, which is another point that we were not able to stratify.
We conclude that main IG Brazilian influencers disseminate low-quality information about exercise and health. The majority of these IG profiles present information lacking scientific support, although their administrators have an academic/professional degree. Such conduct contributes to the wide-spreading of misinformation to a large audience (i.e., millions of followers) as indicated by the negative correlation between the number of followers and the influencer´s qualification.