Identity Construction In Online Fitness Practices Of Youth Groups From The Perspective Of Health Communication

With the development and progress of society,people’s material living standards have greatly improved,which has also led to the increasing incidence of various diseases.A sudden epidemic of New Crown Pneumonia in 2020 has greatly raised people’s health awareness.The continuous development of network technology has provided convenient conditions for people to use the Internet to spread health knowledge,and as an important means to improve health,exercise and fitness has received more and more people’s attention.As a social and fitness app,Keep has attracted a large number of youth groups who love sports and fitness.In this paper,we focus on the identity of the youth fitness group in Keep,using in-depth interviews and participant observation.We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 young Keep users,and combined our own long-term experience of using Keep with participant observation in the Keep community.The study mainly investigated what forms of health communication practices the youth group used on the Keep platform,what motivations they used to participate in sports and fitness,then explored how the youth group constructed their identity through the health communication practice of sports and fitness,and finally explored how the Keep platform influenced the construction of the youth group’s identity.The study found that youth groups mainly use Keep for exercise and fitness and health communication practices based on the increased health awareness,increased real-life stress,increased body concerns,and the sharing of cognitive surplus.There are three main ways for young people to practice health communication in Keep,namely,exercise and practice,self-presentation and community interaction,and Keep not only satisfies young people’s needs for exercise and fitness,but also their social needs.Through a variety of "exercise" and "card" practice,young people have created a sports-loving image in the Keep community,improved their satisfaction with themselves,and realized the construction of their self-identity.Through the communication and interaction with other fitness groups,they also realize the construction of group identity.In this process,the Keep platform plays an important role in the construction of youth identity based on its brand culture and various reward and incentive systems,but it is not conducive to the construction of youth identity due to the quantitative data and the lack of depth of the weakly connected community itself.In the concluding part,this paper points out that there are some pseudo-health knowledge in the Keep community,which may mislead the youth groups,some unscientific fitness videos may cause harm to the youth groups’ physical health,and the single body standard in the Keep community may confine the aesthetics of the youth groups,which are all issues that need to be improved in the future development of the Keep platform.