#yoga on Instagram: Understanding yogic principles in the online conversation and community

Type of Proposal

Oral Presentation

Faculty

Faculty of Human Kinetics

Proposal

Due to the rise in popularity with Instagram and online communities, yoga teachers are using social networking sites to market the practice as a tool for physical development (Jain, 2015; Jois, 2002). According to the traditional teachings, however, yoga should be primarily practiced to experience contemplative states of consciousness and spirituality (Büssing et al., 2012). The purpose was to investigate #yoga on Instagram to better understand the nature of who is posting about yoga, in addition to whether the traditional teachings are present. It is important to examine the relationship between yoga on Instagram and whether traditional teachings are being translated to better understand how modern-day practitioners are communicating the purpose of yoga. A multi-method approach was utilized for this study. Using the Netlytic program (Grudz, 2016), a text and content analysis (N=35,000) was conducted to examine authors’ captions/comments associated with #yoga collected over a nine days. Netlytic (2016) creates categories of words/phrases to represent broader categories (i.e., positive vs. negative words), and then automatically identifies what data entries belong to what pre-determined category based on word similarity. Lastly, an image and caption coding scheme adapted from Cowans (2016) was developed and will be used to analyze 300 unique authors and 300 unique images from the larger dataset (results pending).The text analysis revealed that after removing #yoga from the dataset, #fitness was the most cited word (n=5,491) suggesting an emphasis on the physical aspect of yoga. In addition, the content analysis suggested the majority of words were categorized as good feelings (n=32,747) and appearance (n=30,351), while only a small amount was categorized as traditional teachings (n=1,703). According to the text and content analyses, #yoga on Instagram seems to emphasize the physical nature of yoga as consistent with the commercialization of yoga, and not the traditional teachings of the practice.

Start Date

23-3-2018 10:35 AM

End Date

23-3-2018 11:55 AM

Location

Alumni Auditorium C

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Mar 23rd, 10:35 AM Mar 23rd, 11:55 AM

#yoga on Instagram: Understanding yogic principles in the online conversation and community

Alumni Auditorium C

Due to the rise in popularity with Instagram and online communities, yoga teachers are using social networking sites to market the practice as a tool for physical development (Jain, 2015; Jois, 2002). According to the traditional teachings, however, yoga should be primarily practiced to experience contemplative states of consciousness and spirituality (Büssing et al., 2012). The purpose was to investigate #yoga on Instagram to better understand the nature of who is posting about yoga, in addition to whether the traditional teachings are present. It is important to examine the relationship between yoga on Instagram and whether traditional teachings are being translated to better understand how modern-day practitioners are communicating the purpose of yoga. A multi-method approach was utilized for this study. Using the Netlytic program (Grudz, 2016), a text and content analysis (N=35,000) was conducted to examine authors’ captions/comments associated with #yoga collected over a nine days. Netlytic (2016) creates categories of words/phrases to represent broader categories (i.e., positive vs. negative words), and then automatically identifies what data entries belong to what pre-determined category based on word similarity. Lastly, an image and caption coding scheme adapted from Cowans (2016) was developed and will be used to analyze 300 unique authors and 300 unique images from the larger dataset (results pending).The text analysis revealed that after removing #yoga from the dataset, #fitness was the most cited word (n=5,491) suggesting an emphasis on the physical aspect of yoga. In addition, the content analysis suggested the majority of words were categorized as good feelings (n=32,747) and appearance (n=30,351), while only a small amount was categorized as traditional teachings (n=1,703). According to the text and content analyses, #yoga on Instagram seems to emphasize the physical nature of yoga as consistent with the commercialization of yoga, and not the traditional teachings of the practice.