Thursday, February 24, 2011

«i-catcher Console - Web Monitor»

Internet: secret societies promote eating disorders

It can be a hopeless and heart-wrenching situation for a family if she tries one of its members with the fact confronting an eating disorder. What they sense at a time like hardly is that the internet is a close-knit community that torpedoed all attempts at normalization of the disorder.

report communication researchers at the University of Cincinnati by an alarming new phenomenon that spreads within social groups on the Internet, support groups for eating disorders. This new form of negative social networks (the authors call them Online Negative Enabling Support Group [ONESG] ) primarily serve the purpose of its members hold to speak with the rod and against all attempts of the environment, to relieve them of their disease, to immunize.

Society members consider their condition, specifically those of anorexia, as an option rather than as a disease. The pro-anorexia ONESG Motion covers four major topics of the disease and used various communication strategies to anorexics to convince them to acknowledge their dangerous and harmful impulses, writes Stephen M. Haas, lead author of the study , in the journal New Media & Society has been released.

The four themes that focused the ONESG are

1) remain The anorexia movement loyal to Forums and blogs invite the members of a do on issues such as food, down loops (" binging ") and endurance training to discuss. There is also something like an "online confessional" where members can confess if they have eaten too much or not enough driven sport to meet the "guidelines" of the community.

2) support of strategies for self-contempt: The websites of the community encourage input, the contents reflect not only contempt for his own body, but should bring in addition also the writer to himself and his inner self to be regarded as worthless and weak. Negative of such communication is acknowledged by the other visitors to the site with positive reactions - a behavior which according to the authors of the study is found only in support groups for eating disorders. The embassies of the members of the other members approved expressly provided in any case in question. This is among the visitors to the site a common identity in the recognition of the common weaknesses and mistakes.

3) Pro-anorexia support: In most cases these forms support is to make the member of the Community assistance in regard to dietary issues and how to deal with outsiders who are trying to confront a member with his condition and to move away from the anorexia of . Move

4) encouraging anorexia: encouragement is the fourth communication strategy that the authors could make within this group . This can by sympathetic messages, which are designed to strengthen the sense of going over tips and tricks anorexic behavior to explicit defense strategies against the negative attitude of non-anorexics.

were in the statements of ONESG group determine the researchers a general ambivalence between self-loathing and Selbstaufmunterung. "When the ambivalence between self-loathing and Selbstaufmunterung to accept part of anorexia is an important strategy within the group because it reveals the inner turmoil in anorexics, "the authors write. is "anorectics cling relentlessly at the idea that achieving a certain weight loss could free them from their inner feelings of worthlessness and undesirability, but that the ways and means by which they could get this feeling of belonging stigmatized and labeled as undesirable. "The

researchers say that such secret social networks are by the anonymity of the Internet, in the extreme opinions on their space, to be strengthened. The exchange makes it possible to deal with potentially dangerous, negative behavior patterns and incorporate them into his own behavior, and new, for the members to create positive behavior patterns. Caring embassies prepare the ground for it by forming a strong sense of community.

The authors write that with the emergence of new social media means of communication, understanding the role of ONESGs more important. They add that the understanding of such communication strategies can help in an emergency to break the typical defensive behavior in potentially life-saving measures.

The researchers have collected their data on social networking sites and specific pro-anorexia sites, their access was public. The Web sites and blogs have been tracked and analyzed 2006-2007. The blog and Fourmsbeiträge came, as far as eruierbar, from women aged 13 26

Source: swissestetix Blog

0 comments:

Post a Comment