An ethnographic study of health bloggers in the Netherlands.

Her research project focuses on the way the striving for health functions as a new way of meaning making for young people. In particular the focus is on the role of the health bloggers in the development and diffusion of new trends in this area, such as certain diets, sport regimes or meditation exercises. These health practices can be viewed as manners of alternative healing, since they take place outside the strictly medical realm. By interviewing different health bloggers, as well as followers of these bloggers, the position of authority these bloggers have and how the followers make a selection in the endless array of different healing methods on the internet will become clear. Aim is to find out what drives these people in their (sometimes extreme) quest for health and what being healthy means to them.

Rosa Posthoorn is a student of the masters’ program Religion and Media
at the VU (Vrije Universiteit) in Amsterdam. During her bachelor in cultural heritage she specialized in intangible heritage and developed a growing interest in the transmission and development of traditions, rituals and religious and cultural practices. Due to this fascination she decided to continue her studies in the direction of religious studies. At the VU she specializes in the ways media and popular culture shape our (religious) beliefs. She is interested in the different manners in which young people find meaning in their lives in a postmodern, secularized society.