The COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide government-enforced restrictions that were implemented to curb the spread of the virus affected many aspects of life, including exercise and fitness. This chapter draws upon netnographic research conducted early in the pandemic, which involved monitoring four open-access fitness forums to observe the real-time impact of the pandemic on fitness behaviours. Thematic content analyses were used to evaluate 115 forum threads. A significant impact on individuals’ body goals and motivation to use image- and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) was observed, with many forum posters being unable to maintain their pre-pandemic exercise routines. Key thematic results included physical limitations to fitness, fitness routine adjustment and innovation, availability of and access to IPEDs, changes in motivation for using IPEDs, and misinformation about the relationship between IPED use and COVID-19. The chapter discusses these themes in the context of exercise and fitness-related behaviours during the initial months of the pandemic.

Netnography is a specific set of related data collection, analysis, ethical and representational research practices related to ethnography. Unlike ethnography, in netnography a significant amount of the data is collected in a naturalistic manner from researcher engagement with a digital experience, such as interacting with a virtual world or with others via social media communication. This chapter explains netnography and illustrates how it might be useful as a stand-alone method, or part of a multi-method approach, to help psychological consumer researchers investigate a range of important real-world phenomena.

This chapter is about how the concept of partial organization can contribute to our understanding of the specificity of organizing collective action through social media. Empirically, it is a story about how a small group of activists via Facebook could raise 9 million Swedish crowns (around 900 000 Euros) in just over a week to a private bank account, and also about the ensuing challenges involved in allocating the funds and packing and distributing the tons of clothes and other items they collected. Theoretically, we want to propose that the undecided order of a social media initiative may hold sufficient power to initiate it, but it may become too strenuous to manage in the long run without legitimate authority. In turn, pressures to incorporate standardized practices of membership, leadership, and monitoring may risk the very basis of the large-scale engagement that the partialness of the social media initiative has enabled.

Although the question whether organisation obstructs or supports social movement claims and mobilisation has long been debated, it is undeniable that some level of organisation exists in even the most radically horizontal social movements. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to how movements operate in dealing with the tensions associated with the question of organisation, that is, how they seek to be effective in decision-making while maintaining or advancing inclusivity and participation. This chapter presents an analysis of the organising efforts of a timebank. With a particular focus on the production of organisation, we illustrate how a group vested on the idea of horizontal, non-hierarchical collective action is dealing with the coordination and decision-making challenges they meet over time.