This thesis explores the avoidable harms posed by social media towards the identity and perceptions of self-worth of social media users. The research begins by addressing the long-standing history of the ‘othering’ of bodies based on normative values that underpins social perceptions of ‘health’ and ‘attractive’, investigating the blurred boundaries between ‘health’ and ‘attractiveness’ influenced by narratives of diet culture. This is juxtaposed with trends within online cultural spaces (diet culture and influencer culture), and will be linked to the delivery of Personal, Social, Health and Economic curriculum in schools across England and Wales. This thesis recognises the normalisation of weight stigma following a period of normative narratives that have led the diet space and constructed the concept of the ‘idealised’ body. Experiences of ‘shame’ and ‘stigma’ underpin the experiential narratives shared by participants in this research and were key areas of consideration when exploring existing empirical work around online harms, and diet culture.
A two-phase methodology was designed that consisted of a digital ethnographic investigation into the use of Reddit and Tattle.Life, alongside a series of 22 semi-structured interviews to gain a holistic understanding of the potential harms caused by diet culture. This research was underpinned by a theoretical framework that used critical realism (CR) and zemiology to explore experiences of cultural spaces embedded into everyday use of social media. CR was used to support the identification of generative mechanisms that underpin social media use and the user’s relationship with different social media platforms, and zemiology supported the researcher to make sense of the existing definition of ‘harm’ under the Online Safety Act 2023 and explore the potential need to broaden the definition to accurately encompass potentially harmful behaviours perpetrated online. CR continues to encourage the production of such recommendations, by supporting the researcher to identify at times unobservable harms posed by the online space and specifically diet culture.
The thesis identifies the cyclic nature of social media engagement through the notion of addiction and habitual behaviours, using a CR framework to identify the underlying mechanisms that effects (and normalises) stigmatising, and at times hateful, narratives that perpetuate harms throughout online cultural spaces. Regulation of social media narratives and the sharing of information across social media platforms, under the Online Safety Act 2023 is managed by the platforms directly, unless in the case of criminal activity being reported to the relevant criminal justice agencies. The findings of this thesis identify a gap between the regulation of marketing within influencer culture that does not currently align the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) 2023 regulations, and marketing authenticity regulations of 2008. This thesis calls for a standardisation of marketing regulations to address the potential harm posed by filtered images, and diet culture-related narratives online.