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How can social media influence users on the issue of healthy lifestyle? 1

Social Media and Healthy Lifestyle

How can social media influence users on the issue of healthy lifestyle?

Exposé

Albane Duchamp

European Master in Business Studies

Student Number (Kassel): 35195427

Deadline: 23 October 2017


Abstract

TITLE: How can social media influence users on the issue of healthy lifestyle?

Abstract

Social media gained importance over the last decades and is now part of people’s everyday

life. Researchers have studied the correlation between social media and factors belonging to

the a healthy lifestyle, such as physical exercise and food diet. However, papers focusing on

the parameters of social media influencing healthy behaviors, or the reason for users to look

find information about this topic on such media are missing. Health concerns on chronic

disease, which have been proved to be strongly influenced by the type of lifestyle adopted by

individuals, remain strong. Despite the rise of health campaign, chronic disease and obesity

remain important sources of morbidity and mortality in today’s society. Social media content

approaches today important constituents of a healthy lifestyle such as diet and physical

activity, and influence people on this issue. Understanding the way in which social media is

able to influence people’s lifestyle and promote healthy behaviors seems crucial for the great

of good. This is what this study aims at, by the means of a qualitative study including semi-

structured interviews, in order to unveil a possible common pattern of use of social media

which could induce users to adopt a healthy lifestyle.


Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................... 3

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 5

PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RESEARCH QUESTION ......................... 6

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................... 7

SOCIAL MEDIA ......................................................................................................................... 7

Definition ....................................................................................................................................................... 7

Classification of Social Media ....................................................................................................................... 7

Social media nowadays .................................................................................................................................. 9

Social Media as source of information .......................................................................................................... 9

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE ............................................................................................................. 10

The impact of healthy lifestyle on health ...................................................................................................... 10

Motivation conflict ....................................................................................................................................... 11

The failure to educate on healthy lifestyle ................................................................................................... 12

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND SOCIAL MEDIA ............................................................................ 13

REVIEW OF LITERATURE .......................................................................... 15

METHODOLOGY............................................................................................ 17

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS......................................................................... 19

PLAN OF WORK FROM NOW ON .............................................................. 20

REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 21


List of Tables

Table 1: Classification of Social Media ……………………………………………………..8

Table 2: Review of literature ………………………………………………………………15


Introduction

Social media, first developed in the western-world (Qualman, 2010) is a fast developing

technology (Tuckett & Turner, 2016 ). A proof to this rapid expansion is a study on the

evolution of its use among American adults between 2005 and 2015 by Perrin (2015). Indeed,

it reveals that in 2015, the number of American adults using networking sites amounted to 65

percent, representing almost ten times the percentage observed in 2005. Nowadays social

media is popular all over the world, even in third-world countries (Qualman, 2010). “Billions

of people create trillions of connection through social media each day”(Hansen,

Shneiderman, & A.Smith, 2010). Social media is indeed highly used, and represents in

today’s modern society, an important source of information (Michaelidou, Siamagka, &

Christodoulides, 2011).

Statistica, an online portal for statistics and market research provides a ranking of the most

popular social media around the world according to the number of users. In this ranking,

platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, Tweeter or Pinterest can be found.

For millions of people, many of these social platforms constitute now an important aspect of

their social and professional lives (Pelet, Ettis, & Cowart, 2017). In June 2017, Facebook

recorded an average of 1.32 billion daily active users, and 2.01 billion monthly active users

(Facebook, 2017).

Another phenomenon in today’s society is the increasing preoccupation on health matters,

such as the advancement of obesity, which has become worldwide concern (Arroyo-Johnson

& Mincey, 2016) and the prevalence of chronic diseases (Strong, Mathers, Leeder, &

Beaglehole, 2005). Many researchers demonstrated that lifestyle had a major influence on

health and could help reduce chronic diseases (Bonnet et al., 2005 ; Chiuve et al., 2006;

Khera et al., 2016).

Social media has not only revolutionized the way people share information or express their

opinions; it has acquired the strength to promote social change (Dong, Liang, & He, 2017).

“From healthy eating and the explosion of food photography on social media, to our desire to

entertain others through cooking, food is today’s hottest social currency: through it, we tell

others about ourselves” ((Waitrose, 2016, p.2). Nowadays, people post many pictures of food

on social media (Tandoh, 2016), which is not surprising since food is a means for self-

expression (Waitrose, 2016). People do not only post about food but also about physical


activity, which can help them maintain their weight (Teodoro, & Naaman, 2013) or obtain

online support (Pinkerton, Tobin, Querfurth, Pena, & Wilson, 2017).

This paper aims at studying the way in which individuals use social media for factors

associated with a healthy lifestyle such as informing themselves on physical exercises, diet or

others. Understanding the characteristics of social media which are preferred for this type of

online activity but also the reasons or motivations of users to use social media in order to

pursue a healthy behavior would help determine how social network influence users on the

issue of healthy lifestyle.

This topic is rooted in current affairs, since social media are expanding in parallel of health

concerns. Besides it is particularly important, for a correlation between social use and healthy

behavior objectives has already been established and that the use of social media can

therefore impact people’s health.

Problem Statement and Research Question

Some researchers have studied the existing correlation testifying of the influence social media

has on healthy behaviors, such as diet and physical exercise. But there is no study going

deeper in this phenomenon and trying to understand which parameters of social media

influence the most users, or the reasons they have to use social media to this end.

On this ground, the following research question has been developed:

How can social media influence users on the issue of healthy lifestyle?


Theoretical Framework

Social media

Definition

In a paper published in 2010, Kaplan and Haenlein - after highlighting the confusion

managers and academic researchers tended to have about what constituted social media -

dispensed a more precise definition of the term and divided it into six different categories

based on two factors that will be later addressed. This publication also details two terms that

are closely related to Social Media, which are Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. The

term Web 2.0 was spread by Tim O’Reilly, who referred to it as the new use of the World

Wide Web after the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, a platform where content,

instead of being created and uploaded online by singular people is perpetually uploaded and

updated by users. The particularity is that single users collaborate to improve online content

by modifying it, adding their own data or additional sources (O'Reilly, 2009). “When Web

2.0 represents the ideological and technological foundation, User Generated Content (UGC)

can be seen as the sum of all ways in which people make use of Social Media” (Kaplan &

Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). To be qualified of UGC, the content must be publicly available, result

of a certain creativity effort and must not be the result of professional routines (OECD,

2007). After clarifying the above terms, Kaplan and Haenlein give a more precise definition

of Social Media, that is, “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological

and technical foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User

Generated Content” (p 61).

Classification of Social Media

Kaplan and Haenlein classified Social Media according to two key factors. One of them is the

concept of social presence, first defined as the “degree of salience of the other person in the

interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (Short, Williams,

& Christie, 1976, p. 65) and clarified by Gunawardena as “the degree to which a person is

perceived as a “real person” in mediated communication” (1995, p. 151). Social presence

integrates two important concepts (Short et al., 1976). The first one is Intimacy, which results

of a balance between eye contact and physical proximity (Argyle & Dean, 1965) and the

second one is Immediacy, designating “the different degrees of separation of the speaker

from the content of his communication”(Wiener & Mehrabian, 1968, p. 3). In order to shape

their classification scheme, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) linked the concept of social presence


to the one of media richness, elaborated and defined by Draft, Lengel and Trevino (1987).

Media Richness is “the ability of information to change understanding within a time interval”

(Daft & Lengel, Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural

design, 1986). It determines the richness of a communication medium according to criteria

such as (1) feedback: allowing immediate correction and rectification in case of

misunderstanding); (2) multiple cues: gestures, tone of voice accompanying a message; (3)

language variety: using language symbols to change the meaning of a message; and (4)

personal focus: depending on the degree of personal feelings and emotions expressed in a

message (Daft, Lengel, & Trevino, 1987). Media richness aims at reducing uncertainty and

ambiguity caused by a lack of information (Draft & Lengel, 1986).

The second key component of Social Media is the concept of self-presentation (Kaplan &

Haenlein, 2010). This concept takes root in the tendency of people to seek for information

about individuals they meet for the first time (Goffman, 1959). In his book, Goffman states

that when presenting their self, individuals control the information they provide in order to

influence the impression people will have of them. This process can be done consciously as

well as unconsciously (Goffman, 1959). On social media, people present themselves through

self-exposure, which is also done in a conscious or unconscious way (Kaplan & Haenlein,

2010). Self-disclosure, which is the path to the development of a deep relationship, can also

occur between people who do not know each other. After linking social presence with media

richness and self-presentation with self-disclosure, Kaplan and Haenlein used the two

dimensions to classify Social Media.

Table 1:

Classification of Social Media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 62)


Definition and use of the different categories

Social media nowadays

[Part to be completed]

Social Media as source of information

As mentioned before, user generated content implies web users to collaborate together in

order to constantly modify and keep the online content up to date, using their own

information, experience and additional sources of information. In other words, content on

social media is created by users, for users. This might bring some concerns such as the

reliability of UGC. Indeed, social media users are located all around the world, come from

different background, have different level of education, different beliefs, motivations, which

results in a UGC quality varying from very rich to very poor on social media (Chai, Potdar, &

Dillon, 2009). This is even more important given the fact that communication technologies

nowadays give people the opportunity to easily send and receive information; therefor people

are increasingly using social media to look for information (Westerman, Spence, & Van Der

Heide, 2014). The risk of using social media as a source of information is that it might not be

obvious whether a piece of information is credible and inexperienced users in particular can

be misled by unreliable information (Castillo, Mendoza, & Poblete, 2011). On Twitter, a

micro-blogging platform, credible news for instance tend to be spread by a user who posted

previously numerous messages on the platform, are written by only one or a few users and

are re-posted many times (Castillo, Mendoza, & Poblete, 2011).



Healthy lifestyle

The impact of healthy lifestyle on health

In an article published in 2006, Crawford states that health consciousness has been rising

since the 1970s, when some medical studies on chronic diseases went public, concerning for

instance smoking or the presence of carcinogens in food, started raising concern amongst the

population. Crawford also describes how people started increasing physical activity and

following healthy diet - things recommended by doctors to reduce heart diseases - and

showing interest for organic food to avoid pesticides and additives.

Many non-genetic factors, that is to say environmental factors, contribute to diseases such as

heart diseases, cancers, psychiatric conditions (Willett, 2002), anxiety and depression

(Bonnet, Irving, Terra, Nony, Berthezène, & Moulin, 2005). Lifestyle has amongst these

environmental factors, a major influence on health (Chiuve, McCullough, Sacks, & Rimm,

2006; Khera, Emdin, Drake, Natarajan, Bick, Cook, Chasman, Baber, Mehran, Rader, Fuster

Boerwinkle, Melander, Orho-Melander, Ridker, & Kathiresan, 2016). Lifestyle is constituted

of many factors such as sun exposure, environmental pollutants, infection, stress (Anand,

Kunnumakara, Sundaram, Harikumar, Tharakan, Lai, Sung, & Aggarwal, 2008), education,

housing, clothing, cultural and religious beliefs (Govindaraju, Atzmon, & Barzilai, 2015).

However, when it comes to the influence of lifestyle on health, the predominant factors are

cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activities (Bonnet et al., 2005 ;

Chiuve et al., 2006; Khera et al., 2016).

Studies demonstrated that having a healthy diet, not smoking, and exercising regularly could

help improve lipids, blood pressure and other factors, leading to a decrease in coronary heart

disease (Chiuve et al., 2006). Adopting a healthy lifestyle can only help reduce risks of

coronary heart disease, not erase it since the genetic factor plays an important role in such

chronic diseases (Willett, 2002; Govindaraju et al., 2015, Khera et al., 2016). However,

adopting healthy behaviors induces a decrease in risk for people with both high and low

genetic factors for coronary artery disease (Khera et al. 2016). Besides, despite the fact that

both genetic and environmental factors have an impact on health and mortality, the

environmental factors remains the most influencing ones (Willett, 2002). If we consider

cancer for example, only five to ten per cent of cases can be associated to genetic factors

while in 90 to 95 per cent of the cases, the environment and the lifestyle are to blame (Anand,

et al., 2008). “[C]ancer prevention requires smoking cessation, increased ingestion of fruits

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Anand%20P%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Kunnumakara%20AB%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Sundaram%20C%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Harikumar%20KB%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Tharakan%20ST%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Lai%20OS%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Sung%20B%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Aggarwal%20BB%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=18626751


and vegetables, moderate use of alcohol, caloric restriction, exercise, avoidance of direct

exposure to sunlight, minimal meat consumption, use of whole grains, use of vaccinations,

and regular check-ups” (Anand et al. p. 2097).

In an article published in 2003, Liebman, Pelican, Moore, Holmes, Wardlaw, Melcher,

Liddil, Paul, Dunnagan and Haynes state that Body Mass Index (BMI) is influenced by eating

behaviours, and that high consumption of soft drinks, including artificially sweetened drinks;

or eating excessive portions of food were predictors of over-weight and obesity.


Motivation conflict

A barrier to healthy food consumption highlighted by Raghunathan, Naylor & Hoyer (2006)

is the tendency people have to infer that unhealthy food is tastier then healthy food. In their

experiment, they demonstrated that unhealthy food was believed to taste better, procure more

pleasure while being consumed and was preferred by consumers with a more hedonic goal.

Besides, they argue in this paper that people are not always aware of thinking this way, it is

implicit and therefore referred to as Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition (UTI) (Raghunathan, Naylor,

& Hoyer, 2006). The difference between sensory pleasure perceived by consumer and the

healthiness of a product plays an important role in purchase intention (Tepper & Trail, 1998).

Most of the time, the relation between tastiness and healthiness tend to be contentious,

healthier product containing lower fat and sugar are perceived as less tasty, and tastiness

often prevailing on healthiness, consumer turn healthy products down (Tepper & Trail, 1998;

Mai & Hoffmann, 2015). Vyth, Steenhuis, Vlot, Wulp, Hogenes, Looije, Brug, and Seidell

(2010) demonstrated that health-conscious and weight-conscious consumers were more likely

to purchase product with a nutrition logo testifying of a favorable composition (e.g. lower

level of sodium, added sugar) while consumers pursuing hedonism or pleasure would tend

not to purchase the products displaying this logo. The tendency to believe that unhealthy food

taste better than unhealthy food is particularly pronounced among people with a low health

conscious (Mai & Hoffmann, 2015).

In their paper, Mai & Hoffman (2015) also argue that a way to reduce this conflict between

taste and health is to increase health consciousness. Their experiment demonstrated that

health conscious consumers will have stronger expectation on a food product’s packaging and

labeling, looking for signals indicating that a product is healthier. If health consciousness


cannot solve the conflict between taste and health, it can at least moderate it (Mai &

Hoffmann, 2015).

The failure to educate on healthy lifestyle

“People have become increasingly obese while obsessing over fat, calories, and body mass

index”(Block, Grier, Childers, Davis, Ebert, Kumanyika, Laczniak, Machin, Motley,

Peracchio, Pettigrew, Scott, & Van Ginkel Bieshaar, 2011, p. 5). Some researchers claim that

this paradox is to a certain extend due to the paternalistic, normative model promoting the

idea that “food=nutrients=health” to raise health consciousness among the population (Block,

et al., 2011). This attempt to educate people through health campaigns is not working since

people living in cultures trying to associate food in priority with health rather that pleasure

are the ones who try the most to change their eating behavior in order to be healthy and also

the one who tend to consider their eating behaviors as unhealthy (Block et al., 2011)

Interventions to promote a change in lifestyle often consist in persuading people that their

health is at risk and trying to expose them to the positive effect that adopting a healthy

lifestyle can have on their health (Marteau, Hollands, & Fletcher, 2012). Sometimes, these

messages can be complex (Block et al., 2011). But mass media campaigns trying, for

example, to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables, or reduce the one of alcohol,

as well as other interventions, often target reflective process (Marteau, Hollands, & Fletcher,

2012). However, people do not always deliberate on their actions, they shift between two

thinking systems, the first one which is fast, instinctive, emotional, and the other one slower,

more logical and deliberate (Kahneman, 2011). Therefore, the first thinking system results in

automatic action, processes more instantaneous and responding to environmental stimuli,

while the second one leads to rational, reflected actions, made consciously in order to achieve

a desired goal (Marteau, Hollands, & Fletcher, 2012).



Healthy Lifestyle and Social Media


Subheading Article Author concept

The influence of social

network post on

lifestyle

Think before you eat:

photographic food

diaries as intervention

tools to change dietary

decision making and

attitudes

You Tweet What You

Eat:

Studying Food

Consumption Through

Twitter

Fitter with Twitter:

Understanding

Personal Health and

Fitness Activity in

Social Media

Eating with our eyes:

From visual hunger to

digital satiation

“Those sweet, sweet

likes”: Sharing

physical activity over

social network sites

Zepeda, Deal

Abbar, Mejova,

Weber

Teodoro, Naaman

(2013)

Spence, Okajima,

Cheok et al.

Pinkerton, Tobin,

Querfurth, Pena,

Wilson (2017)

-taking pictures of

their food bring

people to consider

more what is in their

plate, more than

before

-in the US, their

seem to be a

correlation between

the food posts shared

on twitter, obesity

and diabete.

Online activities

such as can help user

maintain physical

activity and to

maintain their

weight

-link between the

looking of appealing

food and food choice

-people posting abut

physical activity on

social network do it

in order to receive

social support or to

inspire others

Three types of

support could be

identified in the

study: emotional

support,

informational

support and

companionship

support

Being healthy or

looking healthy?

Insta-Grams: The

Effect of Consumer

Weight on Reactions

to Healthy Food Posts

Brian R. Kinard -healthy food posts

are increasing on

social networks

which should be


positive on users

weight on the long

run

-however obesity

rate still increasing

people might

spend more time

trying to look

healthy by posting

such images instead

of actually eating

healthy

-obese or over-

weight people do

“like” or comment

healthy food post a

lot.


Review of Literature

Topic Title Author(s) Source Content

Social media Users of the world,

unite! The

challenges and

opportuinities of

social media

Kaplan &

Haenlein

Business

Horizons (2010)

-definition of

social media

-classification of

social media (6

categories)

Paper used by

many scientists

approaching the

topic of social

media

Social media The social

psychology of

telecommunications

Short et al. Book (1976) -social presence

and its concepts

Social media Message

equivocality, media

selection, and

manager

performance:

Implications for

information

systems

Draft, Lengel,

& Trevino

MIS Quarterly

(1987)

-Media richness,

its goal and

components

Social media The presentation of

self in everyday life

Goffman Book (1959) -The concept of

Self

-information

people reveal

about themselves

Social media Information

credibility on

twitter

Castillo Confrernce

(2011):

Proceedings of

the 20th

international

conference on

World wide

web

-the reliability of

information on

social media

Social media Anxiety and

depression are

associated with

unhealthy lifestyle

in patients at risk of

cardiovascular

disease

Bonnet, Irving Atherosclerosis

(2005)

-unhealthy

lifestyle

associated with

anxiety and

depression

Social media Balancing life-style

and genomics

research for disease

Willett Science (2002) -unhealthy

lifestyle

associated with


prevention. chronic diseases

Social media Healthy lifestyle

factors in the

primary prevention

of coronary heart

disease among

men: Benefits

among users and

nonusers of lipid-

lowering and

antihypertensive

medications

Chiuve et al. Circulation

(2006)

-how healthy

lifestyle can help

reduce heart

diseases

Healthy

Lifestyle

The Unhealthy =

Tasty Intuition and

its effects on taste

inferences,

enjoyment, and

choice of food

products

Raghunathan et

al.

Journal of

Marketing

(2006)

The

Unhealthy=Tasty

Intuition

Healthy

Lifestyle

Taste of health: a

study on consumer

acceptance of corn

chips

Tepper & Trail Food Quality

and Preference

(1998)

The prevalence

of taste over

health

Healthy

Lifestyle

How to combat the

Unhealthy = Tasty

Intuition: The

influencing role of

health

consciousness

Mai &

Hoffman

Journal of

Public Policy &

Marketing

(2015)

-how to solve the

UTI

Healthy

Lifestyle

From nutrients to

nurturance: A

conceptual

introduction to food

well-being

Block et al. Journal of

Public Policy &

Marketing

(2011)

-the failure of

health

campaigns

-the concept of

FWB


Methodology

Qualitative research, which has been for a long time defined simply as a research method that was not

a quantitative method, has been increasingly used over time and is today an established and respected

method (Flick, Managing quality in qualitative research, 2007). This approach aims at analyzing

phenomenon experienced by individuals or group of people, in their professional or daily life, , in

order to have an insight, deep and personal point of view of the environment in which people are

living ( (Flick, 2007). By taking into account the perspective of the participants and omitting

preconceived ideas or their own perspective of the world, researchers can understand how people truly

see things (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015).

Theory in qualitative research can be used during the interview in order to have an idea of the

phenomenon participants are inquired about, but it can also be generated during the study (Creswell,

2014). While quantitative approaches can employ preconceived models, hypothesis or theories,

quantitative research collect data in order to identify a pattern which can help the researcher to

understand things (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015). Thanks to the use of open-ended questions,

participants can share their point of view, going in-depths, allowing the researcher to understand

situations which are sometimes complex (Creswell, 2014).

This paper aims at understanding the way people use social media in order to find information on the

constituents of a healthy lifestyle, that is to say information on food, physical exercises, tobacco,

alcohol or others. It seems important to understand the reasons they have to use social media for this

purpose. Are they following specific persons or pages, reading articles, watching video, looking for

motivation or support? What, from users’ point of view, makes social media useful in order to pursue

their healthy lifestyle goal?

The use of a qualitative study constitutes a good option in order to consider all these dimensions. The

interest to use communication, a basic mode of interaction, is to get to know the participants, learn

about their feelings and experience, their hopes and what constitute the world they live in (Kvale,

2007). This is exactly was this study aims at, which is understanding in which way social media help

the participants achieve a healthy lifestyle, implying hearing about their perspective, their arguments,

understanding the environment surrounding them and hearing about their personal feelings.

In their book, Edwards and Holland (2013) states that the empirical part of a qualitative research is

constituted of interviews, which are in majority semi-structured and unstructured interviews (p. 29).

In semi-structured interviews the researchers have a list containing topics they want to cover, a

flexible guideline to the interview which takes the form of a discussion; therefore, there is no strict

order in which the topics should be discussed and participants can give answers researchers decide to


develop (Edwards & Holland, 2013, p. 29). The understanding of the topic and the way interviewees

approach it is interesting for the researcher. In semi-structures interviews, interviews have a greater

possibility to approach the topic and take part in the discussion in their own terms, more than in a

structured interview (Edwards & Holland, 2013, p.29).

Semi-structured interviews will be used in this study, in order to give interviewees the chance to

approach the topic from their perspective, and with their own terms, since for example, everybody

might not perceive what is healthy and what is not the same way, the topic healthy lifestyle will be

approached and interviewees will be free to include the elements they judge coherent in it.

Around five semi-structured interviews will be held, each of them lasting between 45 and 60 minutes.

The geographical area will not be restricted to the area of Kassel or to Germany, but will include

males and females of different nationalities. To make sure that the participants have a background in

social media, they will be recruited on a social networking site through a public post asking for

volunteers who are interested in the healthy lifestyle topic and using social media in order to gather

information it. Interviews will be held face to face, through phone calls or video calls. Besides, they

will be recorded, with the agreement of the interviewees, allowing a better analysis of the data.


Overview of Chapters

1. Abstract

2. Table of contents

3. List of tables

4. Introduction

4.1. Background

4.2. Problem statement and purpose

4.3. Structure of the thesis

5. Theoretical Framework

5.1. Social media

5.2. Healthy lifestyle

5.3. Social media and healthy lifestyle

6. Research Question

7. Methodology

7.1. Qualitative approach

7.2. Semi-structured interviews

7.3. Selection method and participants

8. Analysis and results

9. Discussion

9.1. Summary

9.2. Managerial implication

9.3. Limitations and further research

10. References

11. Appendix


Plan of work from now on

Dates Objective

23/10/17 – 31/10/17 -advance on the theoretical part (complete chapters 1 and

2, start chapter 3)

-design the semi-structures interview guideline and

conduct and do a pretest to see if the questions are

adequate

01/11/17 – 20/11/17 -Conduct the semi-structured interviews, see if more than

5 are necessary

-Do the coding

From 20/11/2017 Start with the analysis and discussion

Christmas Holidays – 10/01/2018 Conclusion, review and printing

22/01/2018 Deadline to handle the thesis


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