Changes in Language Style and Topics in an Online Eating Disorder Community at the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study.

Publisher: JMIR Publications Country of Publication: Canada NLM ID: 100959882 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1438-8871 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 14388871 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Med Internet Res Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: <2011- > : Toronto : JMIR Publications
Original Publication: [Pittsburgh, PA? : s.n., 1999-

Language* ; Pandemics* ; Social Media* ; Social Support*; COVID-19/*epidemiology ; Feeding and Eating Disorders/*psychology; Emotions ; Feeding and Eating Disorders/physiopathology ; Humans ; Latent Class Analysis ; Linguistics ; Mental Health ; Psychological Distress ; SARS-CoV-2 ; Weight Loss

Background: COVID-19 has affected individuals with lived experience of eating disorders (EDs), with many reporting higher psychological distress, higher prevalence of ED symptoms, and compensatory behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic and the health and safety measures taken to contain its spread also disrupted routines and reduced access to familiar coping mechanisms, social support networks, and health care services. Social media and the ED communities on social media platforms have been an important source of support for individuals with EDs in the past. So far, it is unknown how discussions in online ED communities changed as offline support networks were disrupted and people spent more time at home in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Objective: The aim of this study is to identify changes in language content and style in an online ED community during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: We extracted posts and their comments from the ED community on the social media website Reddit and concatenated them to comment threads. To analyze these threads, we applied top-down and bottom-up language analysis methods based on topic modeling with latent Dirichlet allocation and 13 indicators from the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, respectively. Threads were split into prepandemic (before March 11, 2020) and midpandemic (after March 11, 2020) groups. Standardized mean differences were calculated to estimate change between pre- and midpandemic threads.
Results: A total of 17,715 threads (n=8772, 49.5% prepandemic threads; n=8943, 50.5% midpandemic threads) were extracted from the ED community and analyzed. The final topic model contained 21 topics. CIs excluding zero were found for standardized mean differences of 15 topics and 9 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count categories covering themes such as ED symptoms, mental health, treatment for EDs, cognitive processing, social life, and emotions.
Conclusions: Although we observed a reduction in discussions about ED symptoms, an increase in mental health and treatment-related topics was observed at the same time. This points to a change in the focus of the ED community from promoting potentially harmful weight loss methods to bringing attention to mental health and treatments for EDs. These results together with heightened cognitive processing, increased social references, and reduced inhibition of negative emotions detected in discussions indicate a shift in the ED community toward a pro-recovery orientation.
(©Johannes Feldhege, Markus Moessner, Markus Wolf, Stephanie Bauer. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 08.07.2021.)

J Eat Disord. 2020 Nov 2;8(1):57. (PMID: 33292539)
J Med Internet Res. 2012 Oct 25;14(5):e148. (PMID: 23099628)
Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2020 Nov - Dec;67:136-140. (PMID: 33129138)
Psychiatry Res. 2020 Sep;291:113190. (PMID: 32563745)
Eat Disord. 2010 Oct-Dec;18(5):393-407. (PMID: 20865593)
Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2016 Jan;24(1):3-8. (PMID: 26230192)
Int J Eat Disord. 2018 Jul;51(7):656-667. (PMID: 29746710)
Psychol Med. 2020 Aug 13;:1-12. (PMID: 32787981)
Lancet. 2020 Mar 14;395(10227):912-920. (PMID: 32112714)
Psychiatry Res. 2020 Nov;293:113462. (PMID: 32987222)
Int J Eat Disord. 2020 Jul;53(7):1158-1165. (PMID: 32476163)
Brain Behav Immun. 2020 Oct;89:531-542. (PMID: 32485289)
Body Image. 2018 Mar;24:137-144. (PMID: 29414146)
J Eat Disord. 2020 Aug 31;8:44. (PMID: 32874585)
J Biomed Inform. 2016 Aug;62:1-11. (PMID: 27224846)
Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2020 Nov;28(6):847-854. (PMID: 32767858)
Int J Eat Disord. 2020 Nov;53(11):1780-1790. (PMID: 32720399)
Soc Sci Med. 2019 Nov;240:112552. (PMID: 31561111)
Brain Behav Immun Health. 2021 Jan;10:100177. (PMID: 33251527)
Int J Eat Disord. 2008 Jan;41(1):92-5. (PMID: 17634964)
Epidemiol Health. 2016 Nov 5;38:e2016048. (PMID: 28196409)
Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2020 Nov;28(6):826-835. (PMID: 32643844)
Am J Public Health. 2010 Aug;100(8):1526-34. (PMID: 20558807)
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Oct 12;22(10):e22635. (PMID: 32936777)
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jun 24;17(12):. (PMID: 32599811)
Clin Psychol Rev. 2011 Jun;31(4):525-31. (PMID: 21272967)
Obesity (Silver Spring). 2020 Jul;28(7):1180-1181. (PMID: 32324954)
J Affect Disord. 2020 Feb 15;263:521-527. (PMID: 31780138)
Compr Psychiatry. 2012 Jan;53(1):15-23. (PMID: 21489421)
Int J Eat Disord. 2020 May;53(5):369-376. (PMID: 32338400)
JMIR Ment Health. 2021 Jan 27;8(1):e26011. (PMID: 33465035)
Int J Eat Disord. 2020 Dec;53(12):2049-2054. (PMID: 33098579)
J Med Internet Res. 2012 Nov 07;14(6):e151. (PMID: 23134671)
Proc SIGCHI Conf Hum Factor Comput Syst. 2016 May;2016:2111-2123. (PMID: 28840201)
Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2007 May;15(3):196-206. (PMID: 17676689)
Int J Eat Disord. 2020 Nov;53(11):1791-1800. (PMID: 32841413)

Keywords: COVID-19; LIWC; Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count; Reddit; eating disorders; language; mental health; online eating disorder community; social media; topic modeling

Date Created: 20210608 Date Completed: 20210720 Latest Revision: 20210727

20240104

PMC8274670

10.2196/28346

34101612