Tumblr Content Analysis: Focus on Eating Disorders

A content analysis studies people indirectly by investigating the material they produce. It is a secondary research method used to measure the number of times a behaviour, concept, issue or event occurs within a form of media.

Tumblr is a popular website with young people which incorporates blogging and social networking. It allows users to post and repost multimedia in a simplistic ‘blog’ format. As a user of this website, I have noticed that issues concerning mental health in young people are common place.

As a starting point, I conducted a thematic analysis by scrolling down my ‘dashboard’ (similar to a homepage) and counting the frequency of certain themes. The following chart shows my results.

This analysis has many limitations. The biggest limitation is that the content of my ‘dashboard’ is controlled by who I decide to follow. Since I am interested in Music, the majority of the content of my ‘dashboard’ is music related, which is unsurprising due to the blogs I follow. There are a few points to be made from this initial stage. Firstly, Tumblr is a place where people express their ‘rights’ and ‘equality’ and share academic content, whilst also sharing content such as humorous posts, fashion or pictures of people. This makes it such a diverse and interesting website. Also, teenagers’ desire to interact with others is shown in the ‘requests for asks’, ‘compliments’ and ‘relatable post’ themes.

Even though I do not actively seek to follow the type of users who post a lot about mental health issues, this theme still appeared on my dashboard. This shows how abundant it is on Tumblr and this will be what I will investigate next.

The next stage for me is to search the ‘tagged’ posts. I have found in the past that there are many posts about the eating disorders Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa. I will search the ‘Anorexia’ and ‘Bulimia’ tags and record themes. The following chart shows my findings.

The most common theme is ‘struggle with the illness’. It seems that many people use Tumblr as an outlet to detail their issues in living with the illness and the hardships of their recovery. I think many people use this as a way of connecting with others sharing similar problems and offloading their problems in a diary style. The amount of positivity towards negative behaviour and idolisation or glamorisation of the illness is not shocking but is upsetting. These tags on Tumblr do not ‘sugar cote’ people’s feelings or tone them down. The way sufferers feel is displayed in a very honest, and often brutal, way which truly shows the mind-set of those with the illness. However, there are also a good amount of positive posts about recovery and encouraging others. Quite a few posts tagged under these eating disorder tags were in fact to do with self-harm, depression or suicide, rather than eating disorders directly. This shows how closely these issues are related.

I also looked at what the most common related tags were. I found that these included: recovery, eating disorders, ed, ana, mia, collarbones, skinny, thigh gap, perfect, angry, depression, lonely, crying, trigger warning, poetry, anxiety, mental health, panic, starving, cut, self harm, suicide, hurt, alone, binge, pro ana, pro mia

A lot of people blogging about eating disorders use the terms ‘ed’ (eating disorder), ‘ana’ (anorexia) and ‘mia’ (bulimia) to tag their posts. I feel that this creates a sense of community and exclusivity between those using this tag; almost as if it is more private and only to be used by those who really know about the illness and are suffering from it. Also, because it is predominantly young people tagging with this, abbreviations are common and expected. The ‘ana’ and ‘mia’ tags appear to have more positivity towards, and promotion of, negative behaviours than the more scientific ‘anorexia’ and ‘bulimia’ tags. This supports my theory that people using this tag really know what life is like to suffer from the illness. The ‘pro ana’ and ‘pro mia’ tags obviously have a lot of positivity towards the illness and are quite upsetting to look at.

A lot of pictures are tagged with phrases such as ‘thigh gap’ and ‘collarbones’. Among teenagers and young people, certain bodily features, such as having prominent collarbones or a gap between your thighs, seem to come into ‘fashion’ and become a very desirable feature all of a sudden. It is a strange phenomenon and usually includes a lot of controversy; people wish for these features and others argue about how these features should not be seen as desirable. There seems to be excitement and interest around the feature, in much the same way as new tastes in clothing or when the new iPhone is released. The internet and social networking fuels these ‘bodily fashions’ and tags such as these on Tumblr are largely responsible for this.

It is also clear that, among the eating disorder tags are tags for other disorders, with depression being a common one. This provides some evidence of the links between these mental health disorders and shows that, for many people, they are not suffering from one illness but a cocktail of many disorders. For many, this is a terrifying, destructive and sometimes fatal mix.  

Many posts are also tagged with ‘trigger warning’. This is used when the post may trigger relapse or upset in others suffering from the disorder. This is an empathetic feature and shows that many people feel that they should stick together and help others’ recovery, or at least prevent them from getting worse.

Overall, I found this content analysis upsetting but enlightening. Tumblr is a place where mental health issues are on display and where people seek refuge and a place to talk about their experiences. I should note that when you search a ‘tag’ of this nature a message from Tumblr appears which says ‘if you or someone you know is dealing with an eating disorder, self harm issues, or suicidal thoughts, please visit our Counselling & Prevention Resources page for a list of services available to help.’ I find this very positive and I like the fact that Tumblr are not only identifying that mental health is such a common theme on their website, but also taking action to help support those suffering.