Abstract
This year, the World Health Organization expects chronic disease to account for 75 percent of all deaths worldwide. The internet is an increasingly popular source of health information for those suffering from chronic illness. Online blogs, numbered at 152 million have become one of the most popular forms of web content. Specifically, healthy food blogs have emerged, enabling experts and non-experts alike to dispense health and diet information to large numbers of people. However, blogging in the social sciences remains an understudied phenomenon. This project studies the messaging of 65 popular chronic illness healthy food blogs and the potential consequences of the messages including the role of race, gender, and socioeconomic status. I find that two narratives persist on the blogs—the failure of western medicine to heal illness and the benefits of altering diet. These narratives result in empowerment through individual agency and community building for the bloggers. The messages on the blogs are also endangering in their individualization of health, side-stepping structural explanations for health. This research demonstrates chronic illness food blogs as sites for examining the dual effect of self-empowerment through health knowledge and the impact of surveillance and policing of their own and others’ bodies.
Highlights
As chronic illness is on the rise worldwide, experts and non-experts alike have stepped in to solve the health issues of millions
Blogging in the social sciences remains an understudied phenomenon. This project studies the messaging of 65 popular chronic illness healthy food blogs and the potential consequences of the messages including the role of race, gender, and socioeconomic status
The research question addressed in this paper is: what cultural and moral frames about health and food emerge in chronic illness healthy food blogs? For this article, I examine frames from chronic illness focused healthy food blogs two narratives persist on the blogs—the failure of western medicine to heal the women and the benefits of altering diet and lifestyle
Summary
As chronic illness is on the rise worldwide, experts and non-experts alike have stepped in to solve the health issues of millions. Women healthy food bloggers and the experiences they record in their online blogs illustrate the struggle to become well, as a woman, in today’s society and are writing en masse on the internet about how to cure, heal, and manage illness and health through food and diet They are influential through the sphere of social media, especially Instagram. Method This paper examines the messages and framing of popular) chronic illness healthy food blogs (n=63)—defined by the presence of an illness, disease, or health condition negatively affecting the life of the blogger Data for this project are collected from two main sources—personal health and wellness food blogs and personal Instagram accounts linked to these blogs. When data saturation was reached, or no new data emerged the themes solidified and I wrote further memos about the data leading to potential answers to the research questions and further hypotheses (Bengtson, Endacott, Kang, Gonzales, & Silverstein, 2017; Kang et al, 2019)
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