Informational Over Aspirational: Delineating “Influencers With Expertise” and “Experts With Influence” in the Wellness Industry

Abstract

The line between “influencers with expertise” and “experts with influence” in the health and wellness industry has blurred and has confused the public on whom they can rely for their health information. Influencers with expertise in the wellness industry are those who have amassed authority through their online content and their ability to reflect an authentic self, often questioning and even outright denying the role of institutional experts and science. Experts with influence, on the contrary, are institutionally credentialed leaders with professional acumen in health and medicine who share credible information while attempting to debunk rampant misinformation. First, I describe the relationship between knowledge, expertise, and credibility, the last of which is considered a central norm of the influencer industry. Then, I offer differentiation between influencers with expertise and experts with influence. Then, through semi-structured interviews, I ask how influencers understand their perceived expertise and how they navigate and communicate their role to their audiences. The findings explicate the utilization of embodied knowledge in the wellness influencer industry, the use of disclaimers and claims to knowledgeability as protection from critique, and how many wellness influencers ultimately see themselves as a “different kind” of expert.

The line between “influencers with expertise” and “experts with influence” in the health and wellness industry has blurred and lead to confusion among individuals searching for information online. Influencers with expertise in the wellness industry are those who have amassed popularity online and attempt to translate that popularity into authority. They desire to prove that their knowledge, which is often at odds with mainstream medical evidence, is on par with those deemed experts through institutional accreditation. These influencers are contributing to what Nichols (2024) considers the “death of expertise,” as they reflect a desire to be seen as knowledgeable authority figures without the necessary credentials or instead, utilizing their credentials in one field to pass judgment in another – a tactic known as epistemic trespassing (Ballantyne, 2019). Experts with influence, on the contrary, are institutionally credentialed leaders with professional acumen and a sustained reputation of utilizing their knowledge in good faith (Białkowska & Ettinger, 2023; Nichols, 2024). They join social media with a desire to spread accurate health information and debunk misinformation for their audiences.

These two distinct groups can be difficult for social media users to delineate, especially as the public is barraged with health information from a multitude of voices and are often left unsure of whose advice to take. It is imperative to understand the difference between these distinct actors within the health and wellness industry and explicate how they understand their roles and communicate those roles to other users. In this article, I describe the relationship between knowledge, expertise, and credibility in the wellness influencer industry before describing various types of influencers with expertise and experts with influence. Then, utilizing semi-structured interviews with wellness influencers, I described how they are thinking about their position within the wellness influencer industry and how they communicate their expertise.

Knowledge, Expertise, and Credibility in the Wellness Influencer Industry

Health, Wellness, and Wellbeing Culture

Wellness influencers promote products and services as well as beliefs and lifestyle habits to thousands of online followers (Wellman, 2021, 2024). Their influence has become so far-reaching in some cases, that they have even been compared to influential experts in related fields such as climate change, technology, nutrition, and health. Within the health and wellness niche on social media especially, we can see what can only be described as a collision between institutional experts and non-credentialed popular users. This is due, in part, to the increase in eastern medical practices and the ongoing distrust of the western medical establishment (Nichols, 2024). Since the 1970s, holistic health and whole-body wellness movement has grown due to increased consumer dissatisfaction with the current system of medical care which includes a loss of individuality and autonomy both among patients and providers, as well as the loss of patient-centered medical practices (Armstrong, 1986; Berliner & Salmon, 1980; Mantri, 2008).

The growth of holistic health practices occurred around the same time individuals began focusing more on their overall wellness and wellbeing. Early scholars differentiated between health, wellness, and wellbeing (Ardell, 1985; Greenberg, 1985) in fields outside of communication, defining wellness as the integration of many aspects of health with the highest level of wellness involving an inherent balance between all aspects of health. The wellness industry is built on the concept that wellness is something to be learned, enhanced, sold, consumed, applied, and protected (Derkatch, 2018, 2023). As Derkatch (2018, 2022) argues, the rhetoric of wellness is predicated on the entanglement of seemingly opposed logics, restoration and enhancement, that allow for this industry to thrive in today’s neoliberal society. The concept of restoration includes healing what ails us, such as taking a natural health product to recover from an infection or treat a headache. Enhancement, on the other hand, involves taking certain actions with the goal of optimizing one’s health through bodily processes like sleep, mood, and energy levels. These two logics keep individuals believing there is always more to achieve, more to purchase, and more trends to try that may improve one’s wellbeing. This has allowed for wellness influencers to thrive as contemporary advertisers and purveyors of knowledge, always having a new product, service, or habit to promote to their followers.

Knowledge as Expertise and the Importance of Credibility

Knowledge is understood as the integration of new information into one’s current frame of reference, and as Dahlgren (2018) argues, digital technologies are altering how new information is obtained and thus, how knowledge is developed. The speed at which knowledge is generated due to digital media and the actors that exist within it, along with the sheer amount of information online users are presented with each day, has collapsed the processes by which new information becomes knowledge, thus contributing to what scholars have called an “epistemic crisis” (Dahlgren, 2018, p. 20). Knowledge being legitimized in new ways has resulted in several individuals laying claim to the title of “expert,” as expertise is seemingly easier to claim than ever before. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that we are also experiencing what Stehr and Grundmann (2011) have called the pluralization of expertise, where many today claim knowledgeability (Kuhn & Rennstam, 2016, p. 25), and therefore consider themselves experts in their chosen field.

Traditional experts, Tom Nichols (2024) says, gain “true expertise, the kind of knowledge on which others rely . . . (through a) recognizable combination of education, talent, experience, and peer affirmation.” Expertise is then a negotiated attribution reliant on the persuasiveness of the claimant hoping to appeal to a particular audience engaged in a specific practice (Barbour et al., 2016; Kuhn & Rennstam, 2016). Nichols (2024) argues self-trained experts are rare exceptions, however, because of these new forms of knowledge and ways of knowing, “experts” are emerging at a rapid pace.

Self-trained experts are common within the wellness influencer industry, as non-traditional forms of knowledge and knowing are more widely accepted as expertise. For example, embodied knowledge (Wellman, 2024) or native knowledge (Baker & Rojek, 2019) is seen as a worthy form of expertise for many wellness influencers, especially those who do not have credentials. Expertise is considered a necessary component to establishing an influencer’s credibility along with trust, attractiveness, and their identity and social position (Wellman, 2024). Credibility is also a relational attribution co-constructed between influencers and their followers (Wellman, 2024) and one of the core norms of the influencer industry (Abidin & Ots, 2016). Influencers’ desire to be credible, as well as authentic, sharers of health and wellness content require us to be considerate of how the components of credibility, like expertise are understood and communicated to followers. As such, this article questions how wellness influencers think about expertise, who are considered experts in the wellness influencer industry, and the ways in which that expertise is communicated to followers.

“Influencers With Expertise”

Influencers without credentials or degrees in an established field utilize their lived experience (Baker & Rojek, 2019; Wellman, 2024), knowledge gained from online courses, and their ability to select relevant content by other creators to reshare with followers to establish their perceived expertise. In this regard, expertise is gathering and sharing knowledge that may stem from institutional education, but often, it is their embodied knowledge coupled with knowledge gained through personal engagement with “research.” Previous research has explored these influencers with expertise, categorizing them as lifestyle and wellness gurus.

Lifestyle gurus are considered “unlicensed natives,” otherwise known as regular social media users with little to no qualifications in managing psychological, health, or medical issues (Baker & Rojek, 2019). Their primary goal is to create social media content on solving their followers’ personal afflictions and can be considered influencers with expertise in food, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, home décor, travel, and health and wellness. Studies have found that many followers do not expect influencers, especially lifestyle gurus, to be experts with certain qualifications, but instead should possess relevant experience when communicating information (Djafarova & Trofimenko, 2019). Followers of lifestyle gurus do not assume influencers have certifications or educational background, but rather, they believe the influencers they follow have just enough information to be deemed competent and are instead adequate at connecting through intimacy and transparency.

More specific than lifestyle gurus, wellness gurus tap into the ever-expanding industry of wellness to create social media content. The rhetoric of wellness encourages individuals to take charge of their health and wellbeing outside of what Derkatch (2018, p. 134) calls an “illness-centric, pharmaceutical oriented model of medicine”. This belief may reinstate the idea that wellness influencers or “gurus” as Baker (2022b) defines them, may never feel the need to achieve a certain level of credentialed expertise required of other health professionals because they function outside the scope of western medical practice. Influencers like wellness gurus are challenging traditional notions of expertise. For example, in an article reviewing an online mental health forum known as “beyondblue,” McCosker (2018) argues that health influencers build “demonstrable non-professional expertise and authority” (p. 4750), acting with a type of “vernacular authority” to bridge the divide between medical professionals and lay people. McCosker (2018) claims “expertise in this context involves a complex mix of trust, authority and authenticity related to peer and social influence, rather than health training” (p. 4751). Therefore, training does not seem to be a primary concern of many wellness gurus and this belief situates them squarely as influencers with expertise, rather than experts with influence, in online health and wellness spaces.

A wellness guru’s primary focus is self-improvement, and their content is intimately tied to the core principles of wellness culture, specifically holistic health. They utilize visual and written testimonies to solidify their position as influencers with expertise and consider themselves to play a central role in the self-help industry. They thrive on cultivating parasocial relationships with audiences across multiple social media platforms (Wellman, 2021). Baker (2022b) argues these influencers tend to dismiss professional knowledge and practices, believing that institutional knowledge is often compromised by political and commercial interests. This central belief is what separates them from other types of influencers, like knowledge influencers and expert influencers, which are discussed below.

“Experts With Influence”

The category of “experts with influence” is composed of individuals who hold knowledge obtained from institutional accrediting bodies, like medical doctors, and any experience adjacent to institutions. The latter of which was demonstrated by Maddox (2022) in her discussion of knowledge influencers. Knowledge influencers perform micro-celebrity tactics to convey information and expertise fundamentally tied to their primary occupation to lay audiences. These individuals are tied to institutional forms of knowledge building, even if they themselves are not institutionally accredited, as Maddox notes. Instead, they employ a presentation strategy known as “calibrated expertise” to share information they’ve learned through their career to build their online presence. This performance strategy combines social media affordances, platform dynamics, and micro-celebrity practices to provide information to others (Maddox, 2022). This information may be based on education gleaned through established institutions, like that of veterinarians, lawyers, or physicians, but can also be predicated on embodied knowledge. Still, these influencers are intimately connected to institutional knowledge as their career was established in a field that has been recognized as one requiring particular credentials and degrees.

Wellness knowledge influencers also obtain expertise through institutional education like degrees or certifications in a health-related field but may also utilize knowledge learned on the job through embodied experience (Wellman, 2024). While institutional forms of education often serve knowledge influencers in a great capacity, embodied knowledge helps to present information more clearly to one’s audience, as knowledge influencers are skilled at communicating to lay audiences. Knowledge influencers function as message disseminators that thrive on a one-to-many approach, and as such they have been compared to public health experts, especially as public health organizations have begun to rely on social media as a way of communicating health information to the public (Lorenz, 2021; Ohlheiser, 2020). Some scholars have engaged with the idea that some knowledge influencers might even be able to work with public health organizations to spread positive messages geared toward behavior change (Kostygina et al., 2020; Lutkenhaus et al., 2019).

As Maddox (2022) and Wellman (2024) note, one is not required to have credentials, specific formal training, or even a degree to be a knowledge influencer who performs calibrated expertise. However, they must share information obtained from their primary occupation. This is where knowledge influencers and expert influencers diverge.

Expert influencers are another delineation of the type of influential user that exists within the wellness influencer industry. Popular media has described expert influencers as those active on social media who focus less on the creation of aspirational content and more on informational posts (Białkowska & Ettinger, 2023). Expert influencers are those with institutional credibility who join social media with the goal of sharing knowledge with interested audiences. Within the wellness industry, this often involves debunking misinformation spread by others including lifestyle gurus, and even at times, knowledge influencers. Expert influencers also comment on trending topics and current events within the health and wellness industry, alongside confirming or expanding on information spread by news sources and government leaders.

Experts with influence, especially those with years of education in their niche, will avoid speaking in certainties and acknowledge the limitations of their expertise more often than influencers with expertise (Wellman, 2024). Experts comment on nuanced conversations surrounding current events, which is appreciated by some audiences and ignored by others. Some social media users even believe these experts’ reliance on nuance makes them less credible, as these users are looking for black and white “quick fix” responses to their concerns. However, experts with influence continue to create content in unique ways that reflect their commitment to spreading accurate knowledge.

In this article, I ask the following research questions:

1. How do wellness influencers understand their perceived expertise?

2. How do wellness influencers navigate and communicate their roles as influencers with expertise or experts with influence?

Method

This manuscript stems from a larger study investigating women wellness influencers on social media. For that project, I interviewed 20 wellness influencers, conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of 378 Instagram posts, and completed a digital ethnography of the health and wellness industry on social media from January 2021 through December 2024. ¹ Influencers were found based on their use of common hashtags on Instagram such as #wellness, #healthybody, #wellnesstips, and #WOCwellness discovered through the platform’s search function. I corresponded with possible participants through their publicly available email addresses before conducting video interviews. The influencers interviewed create content spanning myriad topics within the wellness industry including fitness, nutrition, spirituality, queer wellness, wellness for those living with chronical illness, and content educating folks on how to manage the wellbeing of one’s marriage and personal relationships. All participants identified as women between the ages of 21 and 52 and all were based in the United States. Of the 20 participants, eight were Black, seven were white, four were Asian, and one was of mixed race and ethnicity, Black and Thai.

This paper relies heavily on the interviews with women wellness influencers over the social media content and ethnographic field notes. The influencers were asked questions about how they share knowledge, show expertise and present a credible persona to their followers, if and how they discuss research and science, and how they see themselves fitting into the role of educator or knowledge-sharer within the wellness industry. Interviews were audio recorded for accuracy and transcribed manually. The average interview lasted 56 minutes. Interview transcripts were analyzed through constant comparative analysis (Charmaz, 2014; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to generate themes within the data. Constant comparative analysis categorizes content through rounds of open, axial, and focused coding (Charmaz, 2014) until categories are developed. Initially, I conducted a round of open coding, looking for patterns in the data related to expertise, science, research, and how influencers shared information with followers. I then conducted a second round of focused coding, guided by the initial patterns before finalizing the primary themes. This article relies primarily on the interviews conducted; however, the Instagram posts and memos created throughout the digital ethnography played a role in contextualizing the influencers’ responses to my questions.

Findings

Through the nature of their position online, wellness influencers obtain and spread knowledge and thus, hold varying levels of expertise. Categorizing them as “influencers with expertise” and “experts with influence” is an attempt to clarify two types of actors within the wellness industry, however, these categories are often muddier than these two delineations can provide. Still, it is useful to discuss wellness influencers in this way to avoid generalizing all influencers as non-experts or denying some experts on social media their designation as an influencer. Influencers with expertise include lifestyle and wellness gurus, while experts with influence include knowledge and expert influencers, though not always. These categories remain flexible, and sometimes even blurry (Wellman, 2022), as influencers move along a sort of spectrum of expertise that is also topic-specific (Baker, 2022a; Maddux & Rogers, 1980).

Understanding Expertise in the Wellness Influencer Industry

Influencers with expertise view their genre of influencing on social media to be different than the online presence of experts with influence like public health professionals or medical providers. Lifestyle and wellness gurus believe their role is to provide inspirational and motivational content to their followers, and only sometimes offer informative posts. As a 22-year-old wellness influencer from Georgia said, “(we’re) not claiming to be an expert in that traditional sense. All (we’re) talking about is (our) experience.” If lifestyle and wellness gurus are not claiming to be traditional experts and understand their expertise as inherently different than knowledge and expert influencers, they are not required subscribe to the societal expectations placed on latter groups. She went on to say, “even just the word influence . . . it’s influence. It’s not prescribing, it’s not telling someone what to do.” Lifestyle and wellness gurus like this influencer believe they should act and be perceived as inspirational users, rather than an educational resource.

Similarly, one influencer shared on Instagram that she sees herself as being “a spiritual educator” rather than a traditional educator. Indeed, another influencer noted she sees herself as “almost like a vessel . . . for introducing different types of tools.” She said, “I like to introduce people to a variety of different spiritual tools and mediums, to basically say, ‘Hey, take what works for you, and what makes you feel empowered, and implement that into your own life.’”

Regardless of whether they are a lifestyle or wellness guru, or a knowledge or expert influencer, wellness influencers believe there is a spectrum of expertise one can fall on and move along. As a 28-year-old influencer noted, “I think that there are different levels to being an expert, right? Someone’s always going to know more than you. But there’s always going to be someone that benefits from the things that you do know.” Understanding influencers with expertise as people who know more than the average person, but less than a medical professional, supports many lifestyle and wellness gurus’ desire to remain accessible and reminds followers that influencers are peers who share motivational and inspirational content alongside valuable health information. The influencer continued to say, “if you think about being an expert as like a spectrum . . . I want to keep moving on that spectrum. I want to get closer to being like a full expert in every way that I can.”

Embodied Knowledge Supports Expertise

Often, lifestyle and wellness gurus are aware that they do not and cannot know everything there is to know about health and wellness, and that they are not as informed as the experts with influence, knowledge and expert influencers. Thus, they tend to rely on embodied knowledge and free educational resources from others to create content that resonates with their followers and establishes them as desirable influencers to follow and support. However, knowledge and expert influencers also rely on embodied knowledge when establishing their perceived expertise to connect with followers who may view life experience as more valuable and more accessible than institutional knowledge. One influencer who is working toward a degree in public health shared that as a Black woman, many individuals in her community do not have access to the institutional education she has. Therefore, she creates content with the understanding that her institutional knowledge may not be as useful to them as her embodied knowledge, and she must create content that meets her followers where they are.

Using academia or even certifications as a source of credibility is also unfair sometimes just because there are certain barriers . . . and I do understand that part of my education gives me that privilege to be able to decipher what is science and what is not.

Influencers who do not have the opportunity to go to school and receive scientific training rely on embodied knowledge and their ability to understand scientific jargon and reshare it with their followers in ways others can understand. Those hoping to be seen as more than a wellness guru do this by citing credible sources. An influencer with expertise from California said,

“Being credible is citing sources that are . . . well documented and scientifically based. I think (credibility is) really understanding the content that you’re digesting, because a lot of social media is like, processing information and then regurgitating it in a way that is simplistic.”

As noted earlier, many influencers see their role in the wellness industry as inspirational and motivational guides who can help break down difficult information into more easily digestible formats, often supported by their embodied knowledge and personal anecdotes. However, the simplistic format desired by many social media users may lead to the miscommunication of information.

A certified physician I interviewed said that she does not share advice related to her field of medicine on her Instagram account because the format that social media platforms afford are not well-suited for communicating nuanced information in the way she was trained. Instead, she chooses to create healthy recipe content and shares healthy living tips she believes are generally adaptable and achievable for everyone. When questioned about her opinions on influencers with expertise like lifestyle and wellness gurus, she said “I think how holistic wellness people approach their content . . . I think it’s cool, but I think it also needs to have more evidence.” This expert influencer said the lack of evidence-based medicine within wellness influencer content on social media is not surprising. Many wellness trends circulate outside of western medicine and influencers, like wellness gurus, function outside of the expectations of traditional expertise (Baker, 2022a). However, as Baker (2022a) describes, this leads to increased chances for influencers to spread false health and wellness information to their followers.

Communicating Expertise to Followers

Research as a Credibility Cue

Influencers with expertise often utilize phrases like “research shows” in their content to preface health information, hoping followers will accept the information as true, without including citations or using inaccurate references. They may couple their research-like language with the mention of an institution, like Harvard Medical School, to reflect their commitment to sharing credible knowledge, and yet, not cite the study itself. As one wellness guru noted, “In my mind, when I hear Harvard, when I hear research . . . I’m going to assume that it’s a very extensive study.” This influencer utilizes the combination of “research” and the names of institutions quite often in her content in the hope of being perceived as an influencer with expertise, but does not often directly cite the study itself, explaining that citing the study can be difficult due to platform limitations and she believes she explains the studies well enough. “Before I shared that little yoga reel and my caption, I looked at the study myself. So, I didn’t just say that. I made sure what I said was credible and the truth.”

I interviewed an expert influencer with a PhD in nursing sciences and asked her about those who cite research and utilize research-like language in their social media content to increase their perceived expertise. She said, “The thing that I see the most is people citing non-peer-reviewed sources, or saying, ‘I did my research and found this,’ but they really read like one article, and it’s a fringe article.” This happens often, she said, especially by those who are not scientifically trained. Citing non-peer-reviewed studies, and even pseudoscientific sources, as legitimate research studies can occur inadvertently, but may also be shared intentionally by alt-health influencers and conspiracy theorists (Baker, 2022a). This calls into question what studies are seen as “legitimate” depending on perspective. Influencers with expertise, for example, may see research that is not backed by an institution as more legitimate, especially if they believe institutions to be corrupt. Expert influencers like the woman with a PhD in nursing sciences, however, view the reliance on non-peer-reviewed sources as problematic and the lack of institutional credibility as proof of its illegitimacy.

Lifestyle and wellness gurus may also mix research studies, combining a published study with one that has been debunked. This results in content that “feels true” but may only be partially accurate or even at times, completely fabricated. In addition, the gap between verbally sharing or writing a caption with research-like language and citing a research study leaves room for inaccurate interpretations by followers. Even when an influencer cites a research study that is peer-reviewed and institutionally supported, there is no guarantee followers will read it, understand it, or even be able to access it. As the expert with a PhD in nursing sciences explained:

If there is any type of article that I talk about, I usually include in a swipe up link, but the problem with that is that people oftentimes don’t have access to a lot of the literature, unless they are at a university or students themselves. So that makes it complicated.

This expert influencer’s doctoral degree ultimately guides what she says on her social media account, but navigating content creation can sometimes be difficult because she was trained to communicate with patients interpersonally and those most adept at social media thrive on a one-to-many communication model.

Many knowledge and expert influencers said they also struggle with deciding how to use their degrees when creating content without speaking on topics outside of their purview. But not all wellness influencers are mindful of how their personal and educational experiences might dictate what they should and should not post on Instagram. Lifestyle and wellness gurus utilize tactics rooted in language like the use of pseudo-profound phrases (Pennycook et al., 2015) to be perceived as an expert, while also reducing the number of questions or critiques they may receive. Others, especially knowledge influencers, may even utilize their degree or certification in one area to discuss a topic in another, intentionally or not. This is a tactic known as epistemic trespassing (Ballantyne, 2019). For example, some influencers with expertise interviewed for this study use their personal training certification to talk about dieting and sell meal plans to their clients, even though most personal training certification programs talk specifically about the lack of nutrition knowledge their program offers and the legal repercussions of offering diet advice without being a registered dietitian.

Those without institutional degrees rely on other titles like “coach,” a term popularized in the self-help and lifestyle niche on social media (Baker, 2025), to signify authority. An influencer from Seattle said, “I feel like it’s such a buzz-worthy word. And people love to attach that and give themselves some type of credibility.” It is an often-debated word, as anyone can call themselves a coach in the digital wellness industry, yet many use it to reflect greater authority. This is another example of how influencers often use language to further cement themselves as experts without the institutional support required to be seen as an authority figure. However, the overuse of the term in recent years without proper institutional oversight has resulted in a decrease of its import in the health and wellness industry. Finally, influencers said even if they are not an expert, the next best thing to do would be to cite others to “sound more credible.” One influencer said, “It’s how you talk about topics . . . quoting and referencing and researching topics yourself, then frame your thoughts using other people’s words who are licensed and who are far more credible than you.”

Using Disclaimers and Universal Truths

To avoid critique from followers, lifestyle and wellness gurus will acknowledge their position within the health and wellness industry using disclaimers. Influencers use disclaimers like “I’m not a doctor” or “speak to a professional” when offering advice to absolve themselves of responsibility if their advice does not work for their followers. For example, in one Instagram post an influencer wrote:

I am not a certified herbalist, but herbs and plant medicine have been incredibly helpful for me over the years, in managing everything from my endometriosis to anxiety and digestive issues. As a disclaimer, I definitely recommend consulting with a doctor or TCM doctor or herbalist before trying any new tinctures.

This influencer includes a disclaimer to protect herself as she advises her followers to try herbal and plant medicines. The influencers I interviewed said they utilize disclaimers frequently but see several other creators who do not use disclaimers at all. Rather, they see disclaimers being used more often by experts with influence like physicians and registered dietitians. As one shared:

I see some people that are very clear . . . they’ll post something at the very end or at the very beginning, “this is in no way intended to diagnose you.” But I think when I see that I feel like it’s more from designated . . . like, doctors. But you know, for your day-to-day wellness content creator, I don’t see that.

None of the influencers I interviewed admitted that they had spread information or given advice without disclaimers, but almost all said they had consumed content recently posted by others that lacked any kind of disclaimer. When asked about this discrepancy, influencers said they feel as though they have integrity while others may not. One influencer who shares her journey with chronic illness on Instagram said:

Integrity is important . . . like, “I can give you what I think,” or “this is what I think you maybe should do, but I think you should still talk to a doctor.” Or I’d say, “this is the information, maybe you can share this with your doctor.”

Lifestyle and wellness gurus hedge their disclaimers with words like “maybe” and “think” to allow for additional possibilities and avoid committing to one piece of advice, understanding that that could result in future critique. Influencers said they want to encourage their followers to do their own exploration of all information available, and hedging statements rather than providing obsoletes supports that goal. Another influencer who details her experience living with diabetes said,

I make sure that I put the ‘hey, this is just what I found. Please do your research’ disclaimer all day long. Because as much as I appreciate the connection that social media has given us, I don’t appreciate that people won’t do their own research and use their own brains.

Influencers said they believe they are not the only ones responsible for slowing the spread of misinformation and followers also need to be mindful about where they consume content and from whom.

Some of the influencers believe using disclaimers may guarantee long-term success in the wellness industry as it protects them from criticism. However, the use of disclaimers does not necessarily stop influencers from sharing prescriptive advice, even when they promise their content is not prescriptive. The influencers with expertise in this study said they try to avoid it at all costs, but they see others consistently share prescriptive advice filled with empty promises of optimal wellness. One influencer with expertise interviewed for this study has years of experience with therapy and psychiatry but is not credentialed. She shares content on Instagram about mindfulness and self-awareness and avoids malpractice issues by never diagnosing her followers:

Even though I may have the terminology and understand how certain things work, it’s just really important to me to be able to figure out if I’m crossing the line. And I can show you how to implement this into your life. But I will not diagnose.

As this influencer explains, “crossing the line” means she no longer offers general advice, but diagnosis and potentially prescribes, two tasks she is not credentialed to complete. Crossing an often self-imposed boundary, as these fields are typically unregulated to begin with and thus, require the individual to decide where the “line” exists and whether they cross it or not, is a risk wellness influencers face when attempting to create content that reflects their desire to be seen as an influencer with expertise, but not necessarily assume the position of an expert.

Even experts with influence are concerned about crossing the line from general advice to diagnosing. For example, a medical doctor with a large social media following said she treads lightly through her direct messages to avoid sharing what could be perceived as prescriptive advice:

If people come asking for very personal advice on their situations, I simply don’t answer those messages. And it’s not because I don’t care . . . it almost feels a little bit unethical to be giving prescriptive advice on very, very difficult situations that people may be going through.

The difference between these two influencers exists in the regulation of their respective fields. The first influencer functions in an arena where many professionals are largely unregulated, whereas the second influencer is governed by regulations set for her on behalf of her institution. Furthermore, the expert influencer went on to say that no matter how educated she is or becomes, and no matter what credentials she has or will have in the future, all her followers are different, and social media does not allow for the one-on-one interaction required to truly help someone improve their life. As she notes, “every person is different, every person’s application is different.” Social media is far from the ideal environment to diagnose patients and prescribe potential remedies.

To consider the differences among one’s followers, influencers share “universal truths.” One influencer said,

Every phase, you’ve got to be able to (say), ‘here’s what I am doing. It works for me. If it doesn’t work for you, I honor that. But here’s why I like it . . .’ and I tend to pick universal truths rather than getting really in the weeds with people.

Universal truths are facts that the public would agree are generally accurate for everyone. For example, one influencer posted this caption on Instagram: “Did you know kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet! It has calcium, potassium, magnesium, and vitamins (A, K, C, and B6)! It’s also loaded with powerful antioxidants.” This caption includes general facts that most would agree are true and universally applicable. Universal truths provide influencers the opportunity to create helpful content without sharing prescriptive advice beyond their purview.

Finally, many wellness influencers communicate their expertise by deferring to others whenever necessary. As one influencer from Los Angeles said,

I think that it is important to know what you’re good at and what you’re qualified to be talking about, and then to defer out to people who are qualified to talk about what they are qualified to talk about.

Another agreed, saying, “I think there’s absolutely a huge difference between taking yourself through a journey and then having the ability to guide other people and to do it in a way that actually speaks to the science.”

Discussion and Conclusion

In this article, I ask how wellness influencers understand their perceived expertise and how they navigate and communicate their role as experts and information sharers in the wellness industry. Understanding wellness influencers as existing on a spectrum of expertise supports the need for a more nuanced explanation of who wellness influencers are and what knowledge is deemed valuable and acceptable among users in the wellness influencer industry. Not every influencer is an unlicensed native (Baker & Rojek, 2019) or an expert influencer (Wellman, 2024) and in fact, there are many influencers who exist in what I would consider to be an expertise gray area, which is deeply relational and contextual.

Influencers with expertise may spread misinformation due to their lack of scientific understanding, the absence of industry guidelines, and their desire to be perceived as credible experts while maintaining their status as authentic influencers (Wellman, 2024). Users including fringe scientists, conservative political figures, and holistic wellness influencers post misinformation on social media without fact checking (Cuello-Garcia et al., 2020), and as this study shows, these influencers believe their followers do not expect them to hold credentials to speak on certain trending topics, rather, they must simply be perceived as competent (Djafarova & Trofimenko, 2019). To communicate their perceived expertise, these influencers use specific phrases like “research suggests” or “science says,” rely on disclaimers when giving wellness tips, hedge their health advice with noncommittal words like “maybe,” and use industry buzzwords not unlike what was found in Pennycook and colleagues’ (2015) study of pseudo-profound phrases.

Experts with influence navigate their professional careers as dietitians, thyroid experts, scholars, and even practicing physicians while balancing their desire to create social media content for the public. Creating content for the public can be difficult, as many of the experts interviewed were trained to communicate one-on-one with clients and patients, rather than one-to-many on a social media platform. Their institutional guidelines, alongside the affordances of many social media platforms, hinder experts’ ability to provide nuanced health advice online. Instead, they reference scientific studies, understanding not all will have access, and create content that relies on universal truths and general health facts. Some knowledge and expert influencers even stopped responding to direct messages from followers to avoid being asked about individual health issues and feeling responsible for diagnosing individuals digitally.

While the influencers, both experts and gurus, included in this study claimed they don’t post prescriptive health advice, they said they see many others who do. In addition, both types of influencers claim they share valid research with their followers but note the common occurrence of coming across illegitimate studies shared by others. This phenomenon calls into question what “counts” as research, especially when many understand most research to be attached to institutions that are increasingly losing the trust of the public. As one expert influencer noted, she sees many influencers citing research studies that have been debunked or might be considered “fringe” because they were conducted outside institutions. Even when an influencer cites a reputable, peer-reviewed study, there is no guarantee it will be interpreted correctly. In addition, if an influencer links to a study, there is no guarantee the link will be accessible for the follower to read the article nor a guarantee they will understand it.

Overall, this study highlights a small part of the ongoing debates in the United States regarding what expertise is valued and who can claim to be an expert. While some wellness influencers are champions of institutional knowledge and expertise, and the authority and trust often assumed along with the nature of that knowledge, others are critical and even in direct opposition to established expertise and the systems that maintain it. Their position is typically attached to their own beliefs regarding knowledge, the processes through which they obtained their own expertise, and their goals as a wellness influencer.

While expertise is debated among wellness influencers, much of this is due to society’s shifting ideals and value systems regarding institutions. The epistemic crisis Dahlgren (2018) warns us about is alive and well in the wellness influencer industry, and in the broader wellness industry itself, and the digital technologies that maintain these industries only serve to further exacerbate that crisis. However, I would caution scholars who assume the wellness influencer industry is all for naught or write it off as an industry only filled with incompetence and fraud to consider the nuances expressed in this article. As this writing shows, there are experts existing within the wellness influencer industry who are working to share accurate knowledge and debunk misguided advice, but that does not mean they are immune to the enticing promises the influencer industry holds. Finally, we must also acknowledge the claim to knowledgeability that expertise guarantees is still somewhat bounded by our institutions, who continue to be inaccessible to many marginalized individuals, thus leaving them to obtain their knowledge in other ways. We must be careful not to immediately write off their embodied (Wellman, 2024) and native (Baker & Rojek, 2019) knowledge as less-than and instead recognize the value this knowledge may hold in specific contexts for particular individuals, especially when applied in combination with knowledge shared by recognized, credentialed experts.