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Hate, Disgust, and Restrictive Eating: Abusive Comments on Body-Inclusive Posts on Instagram

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Gender, Sexuality and the UN's SDGs

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

Abstract

This chapter looks at hate comments on the social media app Instagram. The focus is on body shaming comments made towards body neutral/confident social media activists and influencers. This chapter adds to the growing body of work on social media activism and online hate. In alignment with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5 ‘achieving gender equality and empowering women’, this chapter shows the extend and severity of the online hate women face for showing and loving their bodies, which do not meet the societal ideal of a thin white body. Target 5.1 of Goal 5 states to ‘eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres’ and this chapter reveals how violent social media can be for women. As body image is linked to health and well-being, this also links with SDG Goal 3. This chapter uses data collected from the app Instagram and looks at social movements and social media campaigns such as the body positive movement. The methodology which is employed is social media critical discourse studies, which is a newly evolved branch of critical discourse studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Tina Kristensen

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  1. Tina Kristensen
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Correspondence to Tina Kristensen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Drew Dalton

  2. Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Angela Smith

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Kristensen, T. (2023). Hate, Disgust, and Restrictive Eating: Abusive Comments on Body-Inclusive Posts on Instagram. In: Dalton, D., Smith, A. (eds) Gender, Sexuality and the UN's SDGs. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31046-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31046-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-31045-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-31046-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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