How the nature of social media platforms supports faulty knowledge production by influencers: The case of nutrition guidance for mothers on Chinese social media

Abstract

Using the case of nutrition influencers on Chinese Weibo, this paper considers how social media platforms shape knowledge production and the representation of expertise. It is known that members of the public now mainly obtain information about health, illness on social media, chiefly through social media influencers. This creates concern for health professionals, given that such information tends to be highly misleading. Here we use multimodal critical discourse analysis, to analyse a sample of Weibo hashtags, to learn more about, not so much how this knowledge is incorrect, but how social media platforms themselves foster forms of knowledge where accuracy and clarity of knowledge in relation to details of issues, objectives and causalities is not favoured. We find a form of faux-expertise, which is legitimized through vaguer small stories about everyday life where the solutions presented are absent of clear problem-identification and of causal connections. We ask what this means as social media platforms become colonized ways of sharing and engaging with all forms of knowledge in our societies.