Managing Stigma: Disclosure-Response Communication Patterns in Pro-Anorexic Websites

Abstract

Pro-anorexic websites are a popular online venue for individuals with anorexia, but recent research suggests that they play a role of “online negative enabling support groups” because they can undermine recovery and encourage negative behaviors by validating pro-anorexic views. By analyzing 22,811 messages from 5,590 conversations from the Pro-Ana Nation online discussion board forum, this study examines communicative mechanisms of online negative enabling support through language analysis of disclosure-response sequences, changes in the language of the initial discloser within an interaction exchange, and the role of responses in eliciting those changes. The findings show that initiating disclosures containing stigma-related emotion words, anorexia-specific content, and sociorelational content are typically met with negatively valenced responses from other members of the pro-anorexic community. Moreover, although the act of revealing stigmatized information has some cathartic effects, disclosers use more, not fewer, stigma-related emotion words when they receive negatively valenced responses. These results provide insight into communicative dynamics and effects of online negative enabling support through validation of the pro-anorexic identity and the dangerous cycle of stigma escalation in disclosure-response exchanges on pro-anorexic online communities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Jessie G. Taft, Trisha Nussbaum, Elizabeth Calvert, Sean McNeil, and Casey Randazzo for their assistance with data collection and coding. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹ Although our study posed no hypotheses with regard to positively valenced responses, we probed into the association between positively valenced responses and stigma disclosures, as well as the effects of these responses on subsequent stigma disclosures within an interaction sequence. First, we investigated the association between stigma-related emotions (shame, anxiety, and embarrassment) in the initiating disclosure and positively valenced responses. No significant association was found, F(1, 5732) = 0.763, p > .05; B = .10, SE = .11. Further, we evaluated how the positively valenced responses might affect the initial discloser’s stigma disclosures within the interaction sequence. The results show that positively valenced responses from fellow pro-anorexic community members decrease the initial discloser’s stigma-related emotions, F(1,6885) = 48.091, p < .001; B = −.01, SE = .00. Consequently, stigma disclosures are not typically met with positively valenced responses, but when they are, these have a positive effect on reducing stigma-related emotions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant of the National Science Foundation, 1405634.