The research question for my dissertation was How do influencers on Instagram use language to promote weight loss products?’. I decided to research this because, over the past few years, the use of social media has drastically expanded with a large number of users making huge quantity of content every day. It could be argued that this has had a large impact on women due to the expectations that they face regarding a certain body standard. Tiggermann and Zaccardo (2018) found that the majority of photos on Instagram are of very slender and toned bodies, which seem to put pressure on many young women to look the same way. A survey of Pew Research Internet Project has stated that Instagram has had the highest increase among all social media platforms since 2012. Therefore, I decided that this would be the most interesting platform to investigate, also in terms of weight loss products.
I collected fifty posts that promote weight loss products and explained how influencers use language to do so. To compile my dataset, I searched for the hashtag, ‘weight loss’ on Instagram and found a high number of posts. Next, I selected many of the hashtags that were being used on these posts, such as #skinnycoffee, #fitspiration, #beforeandafter, #fatlossjourney and #caloricountedmeals, which lead me to other examples of influencers promoting weight loss products. I decided to select fifty posts because it gave me a large and varied dataset, meaning I could investigate it and build a solid argument. I carried out a qualitative investigation by picking out common themes that emerged from the analysis and discussed how those themes were represented through different linguistic patterns. These themes included:
* anti-obesity, focusing on being thin, implying that being fat is wrong ;
* reinvention, that is the the idea of new beginnings and reinventing oneself in terms of diet and exercise;
* the convenience of the products: how easy it is to use a product, and how quickly one is able to lose weight when using it;
* follower orientation language, language focusing on benefitting the followers);
* and self-control, controlling ones diet and exercise routine
I decided to analyse the dataset through a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis Framework because I found that the language used in the posts was aimed at women, generally telling them how to lose weight. The themes connote the idea that women need to look a certain way and achieve that way through weight loss products to be fully accepted in nowadays society.
I was enlightened by the variety of ways language was used to promote the products. For instance, I found that the underlying discourse of failure existed in most of the themes. For example, in the theme, ‘self-control’, it fixates on the idea that women should be able to control their eating and exercise habits. Therefore, if they are not able to control it, they have failed. The discourse of failure is also present in the ‘convenience of products’ theme through the use of adverbs such as ‘just’, for example, implying that it is simple to lose weight, possibly leaving customers feeling like they had failed if they are not to achieve their goals (and the influencers’ look) as easily. This kind of discourse was also present in the ‘Anti-obesity’ theme because it focused on the idea that a ‘bikini body’ was important for women, suggesting that if a woman is not able to reach a specific body type, then they are not able to enjoy the same activities that other people do in the summertime. ‘Reinvention’ also conveyed this type of discourse when idioms such as “off track” were being used to describe a person not being in the right place to reach their goals and therefore failing at losing weight. This common underlying meaning suggests that influencers are focused on succeeding and showing this to their audience. One can argue that this discourse emerging from the Instagram influencers can be damaging to young people because they have so much power and many people are inspired by them.
I really enjoyed writing this dissertation as I learnt a lot about the power of language and how influential it can be. There were, however, many components that I did not cover due to the word limit of 10,000 words. The promotion of weight loss on other social media platforms could be interesting to investigate, as it would be fascinating to see if there was a difference between the platforms, and thus explore the reason behind this. It would also be intriguing to carry out this study with a larger dataset, in order to see whether any more themes are revealed.
The best part about writing this dissertation was the fact that I had the creative freedom to write about whatever I wanted. I was particularly interested about weight loss culture on social media and how that is transferred through language. Therefore, that made the process of writing my dissertation an incredibly joyous experience. Furthermore, the support I had from my dissertation supervisor was brilliant, as she encouraged and praised me, yet challenged me when it was appropriate. I would encourage future students writing a dissertation to choose a topic that they are passionate about on a day to day basis because 1. The experience will be more enjoyable, and 2. You will discover so much information and background knowledge that you never even knew about.
Tiggermann, M, Zaccardo, M, 2016. ‘’Strong is the new skinny’: A content analysis of #fitspiration images on Instagram’, Journal of Health and Psychology, 9(8), pp. 1003-1011
Meg Donovan
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