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Influence at the Intersection of Social Media and Celebrity.

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Celebrities and public figures have long been shown to be important influencers of human behavior, with psychological, social, and biological mechanisms proposed.1 Celebrity behavior and messaging can have positive implications… Click to show full abstract

Celebrities and public figures have long been shown to be important influencers of human behavior, with psychological, social, and biological mechanisms proposed.1 Celebrity behavior and messaging can have positive implications for health behaviors; for example, in the 1990s, basketball player Magic Johnson’s public disclosure of HIV-positive status was correlated with increased condom use among Black and Hispanic individuals.2 This influence also makes celebrities attractive to marketers for products that are less healthy; from athletes promoting alcohol brands to musicians designing meals at fast food chains, celebrity endorsement is common practice for advertisers. Using social media, celebrities (and marketers) can reach an expanded audience. Even if a celebrity is not paid to promote a product or activity, they may post about it on social media, and as a role model, they set an example for their social media followers, often adolescents, to potentially emulate. Turnwald and colleagues3 describe a content analysis of 3065 photos of foods and beverages posted by 181 celebrities (actors, actresses, television personalities, athletes, and musicians) on Instagram (a photoand video-sharing social media platform). The authors graded the healthfulness of each food and beverage using the Nutrient Profile Index (NPI),4 an established tool that uses the macronutrient and micronutrient content of foods and beverages to yield a grade from 0 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy). Turnwald and colleagues3 then used a model-estimated mean score of 64 or higher to represent healthy foods and 70 or higher to represent healthy beverages. The authors found that 87.3% of the celebrity social media accounts had a mean NPI score in the less healthy range for food posts and 89.5% of the accounts had less healthy beverage scores. Of interest, food posts scored as less healthy had significantly more engagement (more likes and comments) than did food posts scored as healthy, although this was not found for beverages. The study by Turnwald and colleagues3 has several strengths. First, it examined a large number of posts across a substantial number of celebrity social media accounts with significant reach to as many as 5.7 billion followers. The evaluation of posts was done using tools that represent nutritional quality per 100 g of a food or beverage, so the reporting of nutritional quality was independent of portion size (which would be difficult to quantify visually by coders). In addition, the finding of increased engagement with posts of foods and beverages rated as less healthy is novel. Although the finding that almost 90% of celebrity social media accounts had posts of foods and beverages with average scores in the less healthy range is striking and may be alarming to readers, there are some caveats. The median food NPI score was in the low 50s, and the median beverage NPI score was between 68 and 69.3 This suggests that even the celebrity profiles that were less healthy overall likely had some healthy content. Only 60.5% of posted foods and 54.8% of posted beverages had less healthy scores. Understanding the data at the level of posts adds depth to the study’s findings. A person following many accounts may not see all of a single celebrity’s posts when scrolling through their feed. In particular, the platform’s curation algorithm could amplify some posts more than others,5 making them more likely to be seen by a specific user. In addition, users may share posts with their own followers, increasing the reach of those posts. All of these factors make it difficult to know who is seeing celebrities’ foodand beverage-related content at any given time, but understanding the proportion of posts with less healthy content can add nuance to the proportion of less healthy celebrities. The study by Turnwald and colleagues3 provides a rich view of the nutritional quality of foods and beverages in photos posted to social media by traditional celebrities such as actors and actresses, athletes, and musicians. This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the social media + Related article

Keywords: social media; food; celebrity; foods beverages; less healthy; beverage

Journal Title: JAMA network open
Year Published: 2022

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