Memetic logics of participation: Fitness body culture on Instagram

Abstract

This study examines participatory logics as a process of the platformization of culture in the context of fitness body culture on Instagram. Building upon meme theory and applying a networked content analysis of #fitness, we highlight the memetic logics of participation that manifest in and derive from an interplay between consumers and affordances. Our findings, first, detail how content exhibiting common characteristics forms contextual memes that make up the platform's meme complex of fitness body culture. We, second, outline how the memetic logics of participation interconnect, cross-reference, and reinforce a standardized and platformized consumer culture. This study ultimately points to a networked public in which consumers follow both context-specific and platform-afforded—memetic—logics of participation in cultural production.