Online weight loss forums have a policy of protecting their members from public shaming associated to being overweight, and provide them with judge-free platforms where members can share their experiences without being shamed by people who are within the normal weight boundaries. However, new research suggests that participants are more responsive to a specific type of posts compared to the others.
Ingeborg Grønning, a researcher from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has analyzed an online forum dedicated to weight loss, whose policy accepted comments from other participants. The results of the analysis showed that a category of posts received more comments.
Online Forums Support People Trying To Lose Weight
The researcher decided to analyze the entries of a used named "Astrid", who was very active on the forum. What Grønning discovered was that Astrid's confessions were the ones to have received the most positive responses. Entries such as "I've been eating sweets and drinking wine for several days" were received with a lot of empathy among the members of the forum.
According to sociologist Erving Goffman, the term "saving face" describes the other users' actions as an attempt to save Astrid from being overweight, because they understand the pressure.
"They step in to help her save face," noted Grønning.
The results of the research were published in Grønning's article called "Digital absolution: Confessional interaction in an online weight loss forum", which is part of Grønning's doctorate thesis on morbid obesity.
According to the researcher, there are three main types of responses that one could receive on weight loss forums. These are prospective, collective, and positive. The first type anticipates the positive output on the condition that the same course of action will be kept, the second one revolves around the mutual feeling of the group, and the third one consists of signs of support from the other members.
"Of special sociological interest is how online interaction in the forum challenges the concept of 'civil inattention' (Goffman, 1971) as a basic social norm for interaction in public spaces. Rather, absolutional attention defines the interactional order within the forum, in which diary authors receive feedback on their accounts of challenges, problems and failures," noted the article.
The posts involved in the research are accessible to every member of the forum. The participants' possibility to remain anonymous is highly important, as Grønning stated, given the stigma surrounding the idea of obesity. Additionally, the forum can be accessed regardless of the members' location, so people who are not from Norway can be part of it as well. At the same time, the researcher described the community as being a tolerant one, which — in her opinion — is a terrific fact.
"Studying online communication in detail may contribute to an important theoretical refinement of interactionist sociology, which currently strongly rests on studies from pre-Internet times," concluded the research.
The Obesity Epidemic, A Global Issue
In the United States, approximately 36.5 percent of adults have obesity, and the condition can be an underlying reason for developing a series of diseases, among which heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer, according to the CDC. At the same time, the obesity epidemic is an increasing global issue, as the number of obese people is growing by the year.
"As of 2000, the number of obese adults has increased to over 300 million. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies; in developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems", notes the WHO.
