Annals of Applied Sport Science

Background. There has been growing interests among scholars to examine public discourses concerning obesity, physical activity (PA), and diets during the last couple of decades. Objectives. The purpose of this study was to critically analyze social media posts on obesity as it intersected with PA and diets. Methods. Data collection process took several stages. First, we created a set of terms commonly used to describe obesity and overweight, including laymen’s words in the big data analytical machine. The second stage of data collection involved qualitative data which we sampled out from the machine learning. Data analysis included strategies to describe demographical characteristics and sentiments of the posts was performed by big data analytics through natural language processing (NLP) algorithms. We further analyzed the qualitative data through six steps of thematic analysis. Results. three major themes clustered around the characteristics of social media users as the public of the public pedagogy under investigation along with the enaction of that pedagogy through social media. The second theme includes the meanings of healthy bodies as socially constructed though posts regarding body weights. The last theme revolved around discourses about the resolution toward unhealthy bodies, especially through PA and diets. Conclusion. We conclude that authorities should carefully examine all possible consequences of the health messages being circulated in the community while conclusive understanding has not been achieved yet. Because the impacts on our society could be profound, in ways through which social injustice could be reproduced through negative stigmatization that is based body sizes

Keywords: Public Pedagogy, Healthy Living, Social Media, Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet

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