A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Pro-Anorexia Public Tumblr Posts Written in Spanish

Elrod, K; Dykeman, Cass

doi:10.31234/osf.io/g2qye

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…We selected keywords and popular hashtags commonly used by ED communities, phrases likely to be used by people undergoing treatment, and terms used by recovered users. These keywords and phrases were manually collected and classified from multiple sources in Spanish and English, including proana blogs, academic publications, and documents made available by the Spanish Association Against Anorexia and Bulimia [14,28,29].…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis

Ramírez‐Cifuentes¹,

Freire²,

Baeza-Yates³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

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Background Eating disorders are psychological conditions characterized by unhealthy eating habits. Anorexia nervosa (AN) is defined as the belief of being overweight despite being dangerously underweight. The psychological signs involve emotional and behavioral issues. There is evidence that signs and symptoms can manifest on social media, wherein both harmful and beneficial content is shared daily. Objective This study aims to characterize Spanish-speaking users showing anorexia signs on Twitter through the extraction and inference of behavioral, demographical, relational, and multimodal data. By using the transtheoretical model of health behavior change, we focus on characterizing and comparing users at the different stages of the model for overcoming AN, including treatment and full recovery periods. Methods We analyzed the writings, posting patterns, social relationships, and images shared by Twitter users who underwent different stages of anorexia nervosa and compared the differences among users going through each stage of the illness and users in the control group (ie, users without AN). We also analyzed the topics of interest of their followees (ie, users followed by study participants). We used a clustering approach to distinguish users at an early phase of the illness (precontemplation) from those that recognize that their behavior is problematic (contemplation) and generated models for the detection of tweets and images related to AN. We considered two types of control users—focused control users, which are those that use terms related to anorexia, and random control users. Results We found significant differences between users at each stage of the recovery process (P<.001) and control groups. Users with AN tweeted more frequently at night, with a median sleep time tweets ratio (STTR) of 0.05, than random control users (STTR=0.04) and focused control users (STTR=0.03). Pictures were relevant for the characterization of users. Focused and random control users were characterized by the use of text in their profile pictures. We also found a strong polarization between focused control users and users in the first stages of the disorder. There was a strong correlation among the shared interests between users with AN and their followees (ρ=0.96). In addition, the interests of recovered users and users in treatment were more highly correlated to those corresponding to the focused control group (ρ=0.87 for both) than those of AN users (ρ=0.67), suggesting a shift in users’ interest during the recovery process. Conclusions We mapped the signs of AN to social media context. These results support the findings of previous studies that focused on other languages and involved a deep analysis of the topics of interest of users at each phase of the disorder. The features and patterns identified provide a basis for the development of detection tools and recommender systems.

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Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis

Ramírez‐Cifuentes¹,

Freire²,

Baeza-Yates³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis (Preprint)

Ramírez‐Cifuentes¹,

Freire²,

Baeza-Yates³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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BACKGROUND Eating disorders are psychological conditions characterized by unhealthy eating habits. Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is defined by the thought of being overweight despite being dangerously underweight. Psychological signs involve emotional and behavioral issues. There is evidence that signs and symptoms can be manifested on social media, where both harmful and beneficial content is shared daily. OBJECTIVE The aim of this work is to characterize Spanish speaking users with Anorexia signs on Twitter through the extraction and inference of behavioral, demographical, relational, and multi-modal data. This analysis is focused on characterizing and comparing users at different stages of the process to overcome the illness, including treatment and full recovery periods considering the Transtheoretical Model of Health Behavior Change (TTM). METHODS We analyze tweets published by users going through different stages of Anorexia. Users are characterized through their writings, posting patterns, relations, and images. We analyze the differences among users going through each stage of the illness and control users (users not suffering from AN). We also analyze the topics of interest of their followees (users followed by them). We perform a clustering approach to distinguish users at an early phase of the illness (precontemplation) from users that recognize that their behavior is problematic (contemplation); and generate models dedicated to the detection of tweets and images related to AN. We consider two types of control users: focused control users that use terms related to anorexia; and random control users. RESULTS We found significant differences between users at each stage of the recovery process (P<.001) and control groups. Users with AN tend to tweet more at night, with a median sleep period tweeting ratio of 0.05 in comparison to random control users (0.04) and focused control users (0.03). Pictures are relevant for the characterization of users. Focused and random control users are characterized by the usage of text on their profile pictures. We also found a strong polarization between focused control users, and users at the first stages of the disorder. There was a strong correlation (Spearman’s coefficient) among the shared interest between users with AN and their followees (0.96). Also, the interests of recovered users and users in treatment were more highly correlated to those corresponding to the focused control group (0.87 for both) in comparison to AN’s users (0.67), suggesting a shift on users’ interest during the recovery process. CONCLUSIONS We have mapped signs of Anorexia Nervosa to the Social media context. These results enforce the findings of related work on other languages and involve a deep analysis on the topics of interest of users at each phase of the disorder. The features and patterns identified provide a basis for the development of detection tools and recommender systems.

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A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Pro-Anorexia Public Tumblr Posts Written in Spanish

Cited by 2 publications

References 21 publications

Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis

Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis

Characterization of Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Textual, Visual, Relational, Behavioral, and Demographical Analysis (Preprint)

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