Pro-Eating Disorder Communities on Social Networking Sites: A Content Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the number of pro-ana groups on social networking sites and to analyze their content. A general inductive approach was used to analyze the content. Two main themes emerged from the content analysis: social support and eating disorder specific content. Themes were similar across all groups; however, a linguistic analysis indicated differences between groups on the two different networking sites. There was an absence of content typically found on Internet sites. Pro-ana groups on social networking sites are focused on social interactions, and lack eating disorder specific content found on Internet sites.

Risks and Threats of Social Media Websites: Twitter and the Proana Movement

“…Our analysis outlined that the five more popular hashtags among this community corresponded to those known as keywords to retrieve the websites [18,33]. Moreover, also the prevalent themes on…”

“…In recent years, different studies outlined the growing popularity of "pro-anorexia" websites and even their potential harmful effects [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Our study aimed to investigate the spread and the topics of the "pro-anorexia" accounts on Twitter.…”

“…These words were selected because they were identified in previous studies as frequently used among the online pro-anorexia community [18,33]. We only considered the accounts in English, Spanish and French.…”

“…In recent years, different studies analyzed the spread of pro-eating disorders groups on Internet [14][15][16][17], focusing in particular on social media such as Facebook, Myspace [18], YouTube [19] and Flickr [20]. The potential harmful effect of this online content has been studied in both healthy subjects and anorexics [21,22].…”

Young people who access harm-advocating online content: A four-country survey

“…Pro-anorexia (proana) and pro-bulimia (pro-mia) sites and online communities are publicly available, interactive and often promote "thinspiration" ('inspirational' pictures of extremely thin bodies) (Borzekowski, Schenk, Wilson, & Peebles, 2010;Juarascio, Shoaib, & Timko, 2010;Norris, Boydell, Pinhas, & Katzman, 2006;Oksanen et al, 2015). They are also globally searched and accessed with the help of online search engines (Lewis & Arbuthnott, 2012).…”