Globally, physical inactivity is the highest it has ever been, and global obesity has tripled since 1975. Previous interventions to tackle this rising crisis have failed signalling for a new solution. Examples of these interventions include setting thresholds of 150 minutes a week of exercise and giving advice to younger audiences in schools through the physical education curriculum and workshops. Social media has seen major growth over the past decade and has caused the rise of a new type of online celebrity, social media influencers. If they specialise in fitness content, they are classed as fitness influencers. Following the COVID19 pandemic, their growth as a demographic has been unprecedented, highlighting their importance as they are considered digital health communicators to younger audiences. Due to the lack of success in current interventions and very undeveloped research into fitness influencers, the research calls for a new type of intervention and an understanding into fitness influencers as motivators to engage in physical activity. To support the research, given how underdeveloped it is, Taylor (1999) and Khan et al (2022) theories were used to support and categorise the findings. The matrix analysis by Gordon and Langmaid (1988) was conducted to analyse the content of 25 fitness influencers to assess their message strategies and motivations for physical activity. All with the hopes of finding patterns of similarity and irregularity within the data. The results concluded that the key strategies used by the demographic include ego, routine and rational. Often ego being partnered with a routine or rational strategy to promote fitness content. For the motivators, the highest frequency was concern for physical appearance, self-motivation, and individual positive outcome. Concern for physical appearance usually being partnered with a self-motivated or individual positive outcome caption to motivate their followers. Overall, key findings in the study concluded significant differences in gender strategies which played a role in how they persuade and motivate their audience. Other results found analysing both influencers personality and appearance supported how they could potentially motivate in their content. Some findings presented physical activity as habitual to include all the advantages and negatives related to being physical fit. Lastly, not presenting the health benefits of physical activity, specifically to younger audiences, could be the reasoning why past interventions failed.
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