Experience of implementing discourse analysis and conceptual mapping of healthy eating communities

Abstract

The article presents the experience of implementing discourse analysis methods as interpreted by E. Laclau and C. Mouffe and the concept mapping method as interpreted by W. Trochim through the network analysis technique using the example of healthy eating. The result of the analysis is a graph that makes it possible to highlight the struggle of discourse agents for the meaning of key discursive signs, as well as the conceptual map of participants in an online discussion on controversial issues within the topic discussed in the article as an example. The empirical basis for the discourse analysis was 3 000 collected comments in four communities about healthy eating on the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. The modified versions of the methods of concept mapping and discourse analysis were adapted for the analysis of online discussions. Subsequent validation of the methods seems to be a promising direction for further research. The proposed designs have a number of limitations, which are discussed in the article.