IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v6y2017i3p68-d103020.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hashtag Recovery: #Eating Disorder Recovery on Instagram

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea LaMarre

    (Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada)

  • Carla Rice

    (Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada)

Abstract

People who have experienced eating disorders are making sense of and managing their own health and recoveries, in part by engaging with digital technologies. We analyzed 1056 images related to eating disorder recovery posted to Instagram using the hashtags #EDRecovery, #EatingDisorderRecovery, #AnorexiaRecovery, #BulimiaRecovery and #RecoveryWarrior to explore user performances of eating disorder recovery. We situated our analysis in a critical Deleuzian feminist frame, seeking to understand better how users represented, negotiated, or contested dominant constructions of “how to be recovered”. We identified a number of themes: A Feast for the Eyes, Bodies of Proof, Quotable, and (Im)Perfection. Within each of these themes, we observed links to social location, including the White, Western, middle-to-upper-class trappings that tether representations of eating disorder recovery to stereotypes about who gets eating disorders and may restrict access to the category of recovered. Documenting recovery online may be a way for those in recovery to chart progress and interact with similar others. However, recoveries presented on Instagram resemble stereotypical perspectives on who gets eating disorders and, thus, who might recover, subtly reinforcing a dominant recovery biopedagogy. These versions of recovery may not be available to all, limiting the possibility of engagement for people enacting and embodying diverse recoveries. Still, users make representational interventions into Instagram by making the struggles and challenges of eating disorder recovery visible to each other and to broader audiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea LaMarre & Carla Rice, 2017. "Hashtag Recovery: #Eating Disorder Recovery on Instagram," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-15, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:68-:d:103020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/3/68/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/3/68/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simone Fullagar & Emma Rich & Jessica Francombe-Webb & Antonio Maturo, 2017. "Digital Ecologies of Youth Mental Health: Apps, Therapeutic Publics and Pedagogy as Affective Arrangements," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Andrea LaMarre & Siobhán Healy-Cullen & Jessica Tappin & Maree Burns, 2023. "Honouring Differences in Recovery: Methodological Explorations in Creative Eating Disorder Recovery Research," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-19, April.
    3. Vanessa Wenig & Hanna Janetzke, 2022. "“That You Just Know You’re Not Alone and Other People Have Gone through It Too.” Eating Disorder Recovery Accounts on Instagram as a Chance for Self-Help? A Qualitative Interview Study among People Af," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-18, September.
    4. Simone Fullagar & Emma Rich & Jessica Francombe-Webb, 2017. "New Kinds of (Ab)normal?: Public Pedagogies, Affect, and Youth Mental Health in the Digital Age," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-12, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:68-:d:103020. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.