The Appearance of Authority in Health and Wellbeing Media: Analysing Digital Guru Media through Lacan’s 'Big Other'

BLACK, Jack (2022). The Appearance of Authority in Health and Wellbeing Media: Analysing Digital Guru Media through Lacan’s 'Big Other'. In: LAWRENCE, Stefan, (ed.) Digital Wellness, Health and Fitness Influencers. Critical Perspectives on Digital Guru Media. Routledge Critical Leisure Series . Abingdon, Routledge, 35-51.

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Abstract

This chapter considers the proliferation of digital media technologies, which, on the one hand, proposes the dissolution of the subject while, on the other, and provides new opportunities for discovering, ‘sharing’ and/or improving one's ‘inner-Self’. The decline in our ‘symbolic efficiency’ is one given credence by a postmodern aesthetic that seeks to challenge and subvert normative assertions through an aversion to ‘grand narratives’ and forms of ideological authority. Certainly, the history of representation has always been one based upon selection, composition and editing; yet, what our social media prescribes is an open disavowal of these mechanisms, which both structure and frame our online interactions. Today, it can be argued that such minimal consistency is achieved, in part, through our relationship with digital/social media platforms, which render some form of the Self visible. It would seem that our digital media environments offer both promise and peril.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute; Sociology, Politics and Policy Research Group; Humanities Research Centre; Sport Industry Research Centre; Centre for Health and Social Care Research
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003256021
Page Range:	35-51
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	10 May 2022 14:52
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2022 15:30
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30206

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