Distant reading case study "Body Image"
🙌 This case study was inspired by MA DC student Caroline Déharbe, who used some of the data recommended below for her essay in the 2024/2025 academic year.
Reasons for studying body images in social media data
Body image is a relevant and much-discussed topic in our digital age as it influences self-worth, mental health, and societal expectations. Body images and their contestations can be analysed through different data, including podcast reviews and YouTube comments. When we analyse how audiences of audio and video content address body images online, we can find out about beauty standards and how they are confirmed or challenged by different demographics. Critical user feedback on beauty content may also highlight intersections between personal empowerment and collective activism.
Sources
For this case study, you may want to analyse reviews from two podcasts that directly engage with body image themes:
I weigh -- with Jameela Jamil
This podcast, hosted by actress and activist Jameela Jamil, explores mental health and body positivity. It features guests such as Esther Perel, Greta Thunberg, and Aubrey Gordon, who share stories that promote individual progress over perfection. Reviews of this podcast frequently discuss themes like vulnerability, empowerment, and societal change.
We can do hard things
This podcast does not have a narrow focus on body image but highlights (self-)love and overcoming difficult situations more generally. The podcast is hosted by author Glennon Doyle, her wife Abby Wambach, and her sister Amanda Doyle. The hosts encourage their listeners to "drop the fake and talk honestly about the hard things including sex, gender, parenting, blended families, bodies, anxiety, addiction, justice, boundaries, fun, quitting, overwhelm . . . all of it."
Alternatively of in comparison, you can analyse user comments for the following two YouTube videos:
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
If you prefer looking at YouTube comments, here are two possible directions to look at: the history of diet culture, and the topic of 'almond moms' (parents, usually mothers, who themselves hold extreme views on dieting and body image and try to pass that on to their children).
History of Diet Culture
the history of dieting is crazier than you think - Mina Le
Mina Le is a channel where the host, Mina Le, typically posts video essays regarding fashion, cinema, or pop culture topics. It has over 1 million subscribers. In her video, Mina Le covers the history of dieting, including the interplay of gender and race throughout its evolution, and presents the ties between that evolutions and the body image and thinness topics. It has over 1.5 million views and over 2800 comments.
Heroin & Cigarettes & Tapeworms: The Dark History of Diet Cultur – Bailey Sarian
Bailey Sarian is a channel hosted by Bailey Sarian which contains videos covering true crime, makeup and “dark history”- mostly referring to history that is not typically taught in mainstream spaces. The channel boasts over 7 million subscribers. In her video, Bailey says she was recently asked through internet comments is she was pregnant following some weight gain, which prompted her to cover the history of diet culture. She covers the origins of dieting and the ties to specific body goals, especially the prioritization of thinness. It currently has more than 3 million views, and over 7000 comments
Almond Moms
almond moms and the illusion of wellness – Madisyn Brown
Madisyn Brown is a channel with a host of the same name which covers pop culture and health topics. It has over 500 thousand subscribers. In this video, Madisyn starts with a viral clip of celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow and how she was framed as an almond mom in internet discourse. She then expands on the ties between the label of wellness and disordered eating in the pursuit of an ideal body. The video has over 280 thousand views, and more than 750 comments.
almond moms and the cult of generational diet culture – Rowan Ellis Rowan Ellis is a channel with just over 300 thousand subscribers hosting videos by a creator of the same name. The videos focus on (queer) history, (queer) representation, and (queer) pop culture. In this video, Rowan covers the generational elements of diet culture through the lens of the almond moms discourse which had recently gotten notoriety. The highlighted video has over 400 thousand views, and more than 1100 comments.
Data analysis with Voyant
Use Voyant Tools for distant reading and identify key patterns in the data. As further explained in the Skills section of this Github repository, you should start with a word cloud / a high-level analysis of word frequencies. Recurring terms may include "empowerment" and "authenticity" but also emotions that podcast listeners and YouTube viewers express or judgments that they have experienced from others. Voyant’s contextual analysis tools (e.g. the keywords in context table) can help examine how prominent terms are used in relation to other words. Collocation tools like the word tree can reveal common phrases (e.g. adjective + noun combinations), while the trends graph can help you analyse the distribution of terms across the dataset. Also consider comparing themes between the two podcasts.
Possible theoretical approaches
To frame your findings, several theoretical approaches are possible. Based on what is taught in the MA DC course Machines of Knowledge, you may want to use one of the following three lenses:
Feminism as a theoretical framework can help you reflect on women-led critiques of societal beauty standards as well as gender-related communication patterns and stereotypes. You can also consider what impact the gender identities of the content creators have on user reactions.
Through a postcolonial approach, you can potentially examine if and why your data sets address cultural or racial dimensions of body image and self-love discussions. Consider how the user responses engage with global perspectives or marginalised voices.
Public Sphere theory is another possible approach and can draw your attention to how media such as podcasts create participatory spaces and contribute to (political) opinion-making. You can, for example, explore whether reviews and comments reflect a shift toward inclusive and democratic conversations, and if the users are empowered to take collective action offline.