Wednesday, October 11, 2023

#ECIL2023 How Students Seek Information in the Context of Fitness and Physical Exercise

photo of conference material

Pam McKinney live blogging from the final session of day 2 at the ECIL conference. [Note, due to wifi problems some liveblogs are being posted later] Jose Teixeira from Abo Academi university Finland, where they have a strong research interest in health information and young people, presented about some recent research looking at student information seeking in the context of fitness and physical exercise. There is lots of research into students’ exercise, but there is little looking into this from an information science perspective. Interviews were conducted with 8 students on-site after exercising, 5 male and 3 female. All participants found information on YouTube, TikTok and instagram. There is a university sports centre which is free for students, and many used gym classes as a source of information.
Many of them liked to record their workouts to share in social media, but also to monitor their performance and check their progress. Every student consumes information in a completely different way, social media platforms are highly personalised, interactive and intrusive. Social media and in-person role models were selected on the basis of their physical body. Fitness influencers have a lot of followers and therefore a lot of power, but there was evidence that participants evaluated influencers asking questions about who the content is aimed at.
Photo by Pam McKinney

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