Female Health Opinion Leaders and Ethics on Instagram

The emergence of health opinion leaders on social media has sparked more awareness on health issues. Social media influencers are able to motivate people to adopt healthy behaviours and make healthy decisions. However, despite this positive influence we raise questions on the credibility of their messagings as not all opinion leaders have proper medical and health background. Therefore, it is important to study how non-expert opinion leaders process and develop health messages in their social media. This study was conducted to look at the negotiations and self-regulations practiced by nonexpert female health opinion leaders on issues of healthy lifestyles on their Instagram. This research was guided by the Media Gatekeeping Theory by Kurt Lewin to analyse how female social media influencers select and control which health information to be featured on their instagram feed. In depth interviews were conducted on six female health opinion leaders. The results of the study focused on exploring ethical issues faced by opinion leaders. The results showed that female health opinion leaders are generally ethical in communicating health messages on their Instagram. In addition, the findings also highlighted aspects discussed by opinion leaders in gatekeeping health messages such as issues of modesty, authenticity of information, credibility and sponsored messages.