Susanne Benzel, Jacob Johanssen, Daniela Nadj, Nahiyan Rashid
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article presents a detailed qualitative content analysis of eating disorder and recovery videos on TikTok which show young women who proclaim to raise awareness or depict the recovery process. We pay particular attention to aspects of form and content and TikTok's affordances in relation to them. We argue that allegedly showing what an eating disorder and recovery are ‘really like’ is in tension with an aestheticisation of the female body and eating disorders that is present in the videos. While TikTok has been described by scholars as a memetic and viral platform, this aestheticisation points to a tension of authentic self-expression, complexities around body image and memetic visibility. We conclude that the platform is characterised by repetition and imitation, but those aspects are secondary as they relate to struggles linked to eating disorders themselves and their representation rather than primary virality or the memetic.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Cultural Studies is committed to rethinking cultural practices, processes, texts and infrastructures beyond traditional national frameworks and regional biases. The journal publishes theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that interrogate what culture means, and what culture does, across global and local scales of power and action, diverse technologies and forms of mediation, and multiple dimensions of performance, experience and identity. Dedicated to theoretical and methodological innovation in cultural research, the journal is multidisciplinary in outlook, publishing relevant contributions that integrate approaches from the social sciences, humanities, information sciences and more. International Journal of Cultural Studies publishes original research articles. The journal gives preference to papers that extend existing theory or generate new theory through interpretive engagement with empirical cases. Papers based on single country case-studies should clearly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses for an international readership. The journal does not publish close readings of single texts; but it does consider critical, contextualised readings that similarly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses to the field. International Journal of Cultural Studies regularly publishes special issues on urgent questions in the field as well as on specific regions, industries and practices.