While a range of studies have shown the negative impact of COVID-19 on disordered eating and body image, few have engaged with how identity and social context interact with these domains. The current study used inductive codebook thematic analysis to understand experiences of body and eating during the pandemic among a diverse (sub)clinical sample of individuals with self-reported disordered eating. We interviewed 31 cisgender participants (18/31 Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), 24/31 women) with a history of disordered eating (diagnosed and undiagnosed). Five themes were identified: Body Surveillance and Dissatisfaction, Movement and Intake Fixation, Food Scarcity and Resource Concerns, Changes in Visibility of Body and Eating, and Bodies Are Vulnerable. We examined the extent to which themes pertained to certain identities over others. Notably, BIPOC, large-bodied, queer participants more commonly spoke to body vulnerability than White, small/medium-bodied, straight participants. BIPOC and large-bodied participants also particularly spoke to feeling relief from discrimination as social distancing and mask wearing reduced their public visibility. Participants related these themes to changed body and eating experiences that spanned distress and resilience. Our analysis offers insight into multifaceted and contextual impacts of COVID-19 on experiences of body, eating, and identity.

This article examines how individuals proximate to online body justice communities utilized and experienced social media during COVID-19. The majority of research during the pandemic has been quantitative and survey-based; it has also tended to center (dis)information spread or mental health concerns. Our qualitative interviews with 44 individuals offer nuanced insights into what social media meant to people during quarantine, how they used it, and how they reflected on their experience of it. Five major themes emerged through reflexive, thematic analysis of the interview data: changed temporal rhythms, influx of toxic content, resource building, additive and subtractive actions, and algorithmic awareness. Some participants described social media as an increasingly harmful influence in their lives during the pandemic due to compulsive usage and exposure to “toxic content” like misinformation, weight stigma, and homophobia. At the same time, participants noted how social media positively enabled social connection, education, and activation around social justice. Across both of these extremes, many elaborated on the intensive, self-reflective labor of cultivating their accounts so that they mirrored their identities and the kinds of experiences they wanted to have online while preventing the infiltration of unwanted content. In addition to offering new insights into social media usage in body justice communities during COVID-19, our data suggest alternative ways of understanding how individuals manage their experience of social media, curate their social media feeds through additive and subtractive actions, and frequently reflect on how their choices interact with platform algorithms.

In 2020, in the midst of COVID-19 related social distancing, the relatively new social media platform, TikTok, burgeoned in popularity. One somewhat surprising topic area that rose to prominence on the platform during this time was dissociative identity disorder (DID). Some researchers and clinicians expressed concern that the proliferation of DID content on the platform may have contributed to a marked increase in individuals presenting with DID and related symptoms. However, given that the relationship between DID and the media has historically been fraught with skepticism, as well as recent work by Christensen (2022) highlighting the development of Plural cultures online, it is critical to better understand DID on TikTok before passing such judgements. This study presents the first examination of the DID TikTok community through a descriptive analysis of 325 user signatures. Using a combination of qualitative codebook thematic analysis and quantitative content analysis, this project maps the contours of the community and centers the creative identity work that individuals within this community appear to undertake. We identified the following three themes within this sample of signatures: (a) Describing DID (with System Architectures, Diagnostic Authenticity, and Being Plural as subthemes), (b) Establishing Boundaries, and (c) Labeling Intersecting Identities. In addition to providing insights into DID TikTok, this study offers a methodological contribution by modeling one way of scaling rigorous qualitative analysis for social media platforms by using quantitative content analysis to complement qualitative methods.

Individuals seeking support or inspiration for eating disorder recovery may turn to pro-recovery content on social media sites such as TikTok. While research has thus far treated pro-recovery social media as a fairly homogeneous space, many pro-recovery hashtags single out particular eating disorder diagnoses. This exploratory study used codebook thematic analysis of 241 popular pro-recovery videos on TikTok to compare the presentation of eating disorders and eating disorder recovery across five different diagnosis-specific hashtags: #anarecovery, #arfidrecovery, #bedrecovery, #miarecovery, and #orthorexiarecovery. These hashtags refer to the following eating disorder diagnoses respectively: anorexia nervosa, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and orthorexia nervosa. Our analysis generated the following qualitative themes across the entire dataset: (1) centrality of food to eating disorders and recovery, (2) what eating disorders look and feel like, (3) recovery as a process, (4) getting and giving help, and (5) negotiating diet culture in recovery. To supplement our qualitative findings and facilitate cross-diagnostic comparisons, we also conducted one-way ANOVAs and chi-square tests to probe for statistically significant differences in audience engagement and code prevalence across the different hashtags. Our results indicate that there are clear differences in how recovery is envisioned on TikTok based on which diagnostic hashtags are employed. Such variations in how different eating disorders are imagined on popular social media demand further investigation and clinical consideration.