Yoga and fame on Instagram: the example of influencers

Since the 2010s, influencers have begun to appear on social media,
particularly on Instagram. They specialize in culturally valued and
commercially exploitable areas like fashion, sports, wellness, travel,
and family—areas that were already widely covered by the media and
commercialized before the rise of Instagram, and which now find a new
foothold on the platform. This paper proposes to study one of these
areas, which is particularly visible on Instagram: yoga (Cowans,
2016). With the rise of yoga influencers, this practice now goes
beyond the physical and spiritual dimensions to become a way of life
that integrates personal development, nutrition, aesthetics, and
family life. 
Yoga influencers are thus becoming online micro-celebrities who
control their media coverage (Gräve, 2017) and have in-depth knowledge
of the platform's codes (Cotter, 2019). Their activity is not limited
to disseminating yoga-related content, but also involves
self-promotion, creating content that meets aesthetic standards, and
building and retaining an online community. 
Who are these yoga influencers? What are their social characteristics?
How do they make a living from their influence? What kind of content
do they post? What does their fame in the yoga world bring them? These
questions were studied through an ethnographic survey comprising 10
semi-structured interviews with yoga influencers with more than 10,000
followers, a questionnaire distributed to their followers (n=103
respondents) coupled with 16 semi-structured interviews, as well as
participant observation during a yoga retreat organized by an
influencer followed by more than 10,000 followers.