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“Hunger Hurts but Starving Works”: Characterizing the Presentation of Eating Disorders Online

Authors:

Jessica A. Pater,

Oliver L. Haimson,

Nazanin Andalibi,

Elizabeth D. MynattAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

Pages 1185 - 1200

https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820030

Published: 27 February 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Within the CSCW community, little has been done to systematically analyze online eating disorder (ED) user generated content. In this paper, we present the results of a cross-platform content analysis of ED-related posts. We analyze the way that hashtags are used in ad-hoc ED- focused networks and present a comprehensive corpus of ED-terminology that frequently accompanies ED activities online. We provide exemplars of the types of ED-related content found online. Through this characterization of activities, we draw attention to the increasingly important role that these platforms play and how they are used and misappropriated for negative health purposes. We also outline specific challenges associated with researching these types of networks online. CAUTION: This paper includes media that could potentially be a trigger to those dealing with an eating disorder or with other self-injury illnesses. Please use caution when reading, printing, or disseminating this paper.

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

February 2016

1866 pages

ISBN:9781450335928

DOI:10.1145/2818048

General Chairs:
Darren Gergle
Northwestern University
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chairs:
Pernille Bjørn
University of Copenhagen
,
Joseph Konstan
University of Minnesota

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 27 February 2016

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CSCW '16: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 27 - March 2, 2016

California, San Francisco, USA

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CSCW '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 142 of 571 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687061
Guluzade LSas C(2024)Functionality and User Review Analysis of Mobile Apps for Mindfulness Eating and Eating DisordersProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661521(1350-1371)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661521
Song QMa RKou YGui X(2024)Collective Privacy Sensemaking on Social Media about Period and Fertility Tracking post Roe v. WadeProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410008:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641000
Kao HErickson IChu MHe ZLerman KVolkova S(2024)Machine Learning Insights Into Eating Disorder Twitter CommunitiesExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651116(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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