Práticas físico-esportivas e saúde no Instagram: um discurso retórico do corpo super-humano sob a perspectiva foucaultiana

Abstract

We started this research by tracing an overview of the networks and their relationships with our daily lives until we reached the concepts of social media associated with the internet and its important role related to education, although permeated by business marketing. In this perspective, we highlight the body as the central object of this study along with physical-sports practices and health due to its popularization within social media. Thus, we chose the social media of Instagram to unfold our analyzes about these themes within the profile of the influencer and Physical Education teacher Sérgio Bertoluci, tracing as an objective to problematize the relationships that are established from the philosophy of life shared in this profile. We emphasize that the work was built having as an investigative locus the information made available in the profile of this digital influencer, in view of his approach, of selling a philosophy of life from the discourse on the body that he calls super-human. This choice does not make Bertoluci the most special for research, but the chosen one so that the strategy he uses is problematized and, from that, stimulated from a broader perspective, leading to the analysis of other influencers in future research, for example. Thus, we seek to understand from the interactions that we collect in the comments of this profile, what possible effects the contents triggered on their audience and were manifested by them discursively, raising evidence that these contents may have affected them in their choices regarding the themes addressed there. Our look at this research brought a qualitative approach supported by Foucauldian theories, having the internet as an investigative field. The data collection period took place in September 2021, since the day of the Physical Education professional was celebrated on the first of September, which motivated Sérgio to share more content on this topic on his profile. After collection, we obtained 82 publications and 7907 comments which, in a first selection, were reduced to a number of 329. We first directed our eyes to the publications, grouping them by themes in order to outline a general scenario. After this step, we organized the comments into nine thematic blocks that, by thematic approximation, were objects of analysis. We chose three blocks as the main axis of the analysis, namely: inspiration, praise and superhuman. Here we chose the comments that provided relevant discussions from our research objective. Finally, based on the analysis of the empirical material, evidence indicates that the content available on the Instagram profile of the digital influencer tried to create and sell a lifestyle through what we call the rant of the superhuman body. His audience, for the most part, "bought" these ideas, evidencing, it seems to us, in many moments, a process of subjection to his discourse. The movement of resistance, compared to that of submission, seemed much smaller.