Blogging for weight loss: personal accountability, writing selves, and the weight‐loss blogosphere

Abstract

Body weight is a key concern in contemporary society, with large proportions of the population attempting to control their weight. However, losing weight and maintaining weight loss is notoriously difficult, and new strategies for weight loss attract significant interest. Writing about experiences of weight loss in online journals, or blogging, has recently expanded rapidly. Weight-loss bloggers typically write about daily successes and failures, report calorie consumption and exercise output, and post photographs of their changing bodies. Many bloggers openly court the surveillance of blog readers as a motivation for accountability to their weight-loss goals. Drawing from a sample of weight-loss blogs authored by women, we explore three issues arising from this practice of disclosing a conventionally private activity within an online public domain. First, we examine motivations for blogging, focusing on accountability. Secondly, we consider the online construction of self, exploring how weight-loss bloggers negotiate discourses around fatness, and rework selves as their bodies transform. Finally, we consider the communities of interest that form around weight-loss blogs. This 'blogosphere' provides mutual support for weight loss. However, participating in online social spaces is complicated and bloggers must carefully manage issues of privacy and disclosure.

Social Experiences of Adults Using Online Support Forums to Lose Weight: A Qualitative Content Analysis

“…These findings lend support to previous findings suggesting that a primary motivation behind using the internet for social support is accountability (Hwang et al, 2011;Leggatt-Cook & Chamberlain, 2012;Pagoto et al, 2014). Furthermore, having support online has been reported to have a greater positive influence on weight loss efforts than support from friends and family (Pagoto et al, 2014).…”

An examination of the information disclosure behavior of infertility bloggers

“…Chi-square: interaction effects between visual and discursive anonymity Information disclosure behavior created by the bloggers in this study reflect Youngs's (2007, p. 3) assertion that characterized the internet as "an international public (as well as private) space or series of spaces" and reflects that as a result of the Internet as an enabling technology, "women are more public beings than they have ever been, and it could be argued that this is a radical development", (Youngs, 2007, p. 3). Leggatt-Cook and Chamberlain (2012) asserted that the balance between what to retain as private and what to disclosed to express authenticity and build community relationships requires constant negotiation. Unlike their hard-copy counterparts, that is written diaries where these disclosures are generally kept private and often secret, blogs are posted publicly and, unless they have been limited by their creators for viewing by specified users only, are readily available for all who wish to read them (Robinson, 2001).…”

Online self-expression and experimentation as ‘reflectivism’: Using text analytics to examine the participatory forum Hello Sunday Morning

“…Other online sites, where participants blog about efforts to change health behaviours, routinely organise identity construction around those behaviours being addressed. For example, Leggatt-Cook and Chamberlain (2012) highlight how obesity blogs are given names like 'pastaqueen' and 'annieshrinkinggirl'. By virtue of continuing to blog about obesity on a blog named for it, these writers can never reconstitute an online narrative where eating, or weight, is not definitional of who they are.…”