The digital IPED ecosystem as digital materiality

The use of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) has expanded beyond elite athletes and bodybuilding subcultures, largely due to the accessibility of online platforms and social media. This study conceptualizes IPED use as a digital IPED ecosystem (DIE), emphasizing the interconnection between digital environments/life and physical practice/life. By integrating these via digital materiality, we explore how online forums, social media influencers, and e-commerce platforms are mutually constructive of IPED discourse, trade, and use. The research maps two key dimensions of the DIE: 1. the online environment, where IPED information sharing and trade take place; 2. the roles of the resident species, including users, sellers, moderators, influencers, and experts. We then discuss the digital-material entanglements, illustrating how online interactions are intertwined with offline IPED behaviors. We critique limited approaches to understanding IPEDs in the online context limited by sharp distinctions between online/offline and physical/digital, arguing it oversimplifies the complex socio-cultural dynamics at play across domains. We propose a framework based in the ideas of digital materiality that moves beyond this divide to understand the DIE, its environments, and the species that interact with and within them, as both digital and physical.