Chapter one: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Eating disorder (ED) is a serious condition that cause disturbances on the person’s eating habit. ED can affect people obsessions with food, shape and body weight.  There are different types of ED’s including binge-eating disorder, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (Nimh.nih.gov, 2016). The Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health (2011) state that over 1.6 million people in United Kingdom (UK) has been affected by ED. The illness affects the teenagers and young adulthood- as it affects their health and well-being.  The statistics shows that ED is a common condition that is affecting people in the UK. The NHS (2015) found that 1 in 250 women and 1 in 2,000 men experience anorexia nervosa, as this condition develops around the age of 16 or 17.  They also stated 90% of females suffers from Bulimia; it develops the age of 18 or 19. These shows that the ED starts from a younger age where most teenagers starts seeing the changes in their bodies.

Media defines in television shows, magazines, fashion, the internet, this is relating to Mass Media. Mass communication is achieved by an organisation working as a team in the industry to produce and circulate a wide range in entertainment to news to educational programmes (Turow, 2003). Mass media has been portraying the society when it comes body image and beauty. It also can set the standard of beauty and it can also cause insecurities for those who cannot fit in with those standards.

1.2 Justification of topic

In today’s society adolescents and children acknowledge the different types of mass media such as films, videos, television and social media (Morris and Katzman, 2003).

The NICE guidelines (2004) state that the outlook for ED can be improved by taking action in changing certain key areas; in referral strategies, service provision for young people and changes in the media industries.

There is link that ED and media can be part of a social factor. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (2007) state that social pressure can play part in media and ED, where the media industries such as fashion and advertisement may be the factors that can influence ED. There are some media industries that can be responsible for the behaviour to ED.

There is not enough research in the UK about ED (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, 2007) as there are no policy and legislation relating to ED. This is a problem as it is a health problem. The government will need to apply a guideline or policy that shows the importance’s in ED, health and safety and the consequences of ED.  The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (2007) states that in April 2007 the health department given £2 million to fund research in treatment and early intervention strategies.

1.3 Research question

The research question for this dissertation is:  What level of influence does the media have on eating disorders?

1.4 Aims

The aims of this research will investigate at:

• How does the media portray on eating disorders?

•  What impact does the media have on eating disorder for teenagers?

1.5 Background

The NHS Choice (2015) state the ED is associated with the social pressure as being thin, and young people feel the need to look a certain way.  Eating disorder can be associated with these factors such as biological, genetic or environmental, as it has an impact on the individuals. This risk factors can develop the likelihood in an individual having ED such as having certain experiences; sexual and emotional abuse or death.

The Charities

There are charities in the UK that associate with ED.  The Beat is one of the charity that helps individuals with ED.  The Beat aims is to end the pain and suffering that is caused by ED, and help to give advice and support for those that are suffering from ED.   The charity helps people that suffering from ED to get the best help that they need, getting the treatment that they will to be able feel restored. The charity also offers awareness training in workplaces and schools to help people to find the available treatment in their area.  The charity also helps healthcare professional to identify the thoughts and feelings that cause the mental illnesses, instead concentrating on physical indications, as it will deliver the support that the patients’ needs (B-eat.co.uk, 2017).

The Anorexia Bulimia Care (ABC) is a call centre that talks to people who suffer from ED. The charity spend time with the caller and able to help them through the phone. The ABC helps to support individuals to learn how to manage their conditions and start living a better life. They help the individual to regain control over their lives, talking about their low self-esteem and their emotion, and helping them to improve their confidence.  The ABC helps to address this by talking about their social isolation and allow them feel confidence about themselves as getting back to work (Anorexiabulimiacare.org.uk, 2015).

The concepts of media and Eating Disorders

In the past decade, researchers and clinicians has been investigating the media effect and mental health, as it has turned to their attention that thin-ideal media and ED are linked (Harrison, 2000). Other studies believe that the development of ED relates to family, peer influences and pressure family, and sociocultural pressure (Field et al., 2001). Morris and Katzman (2003) imply that there have been several studies that have proposed a link that how the media portray on thin female beauty ideal and muscular male body ideal- that involves in a range of psychological symptomatology associated with body dissatisfaction and ED. There has some other studies state that body dissatisfaction is high among adolescence, especially in girls than boys (Knauss, Paxton and Alsaker, 2007).

According to Ferguson et al., (2013), some believe that the media influences body dissatisfaction which may extend to in eating disorders conditions, and is likely to explain the increases of Bulimia Nervosa across the twentieth centuries in the western nation. Other researchers believe that the relationship between media and body dissatisfaction are not consistent and it may be explained by other variables such as personality traits or family environment (Holmstrom, 2014) and may not apply to all girls (Roberts and Good, 2010).

There has been evidence that ED is linked to different factors (Shepherd and Seale, 2010) such as in psychological factors, having low self- esteem or being stress. The social factors contain the way media advertise thin ideal body images. It also includes factors in family, environmental, genetic and biological.

Shepherd and Seale (2010) found that the public perceptions differ from the medical view in EDS, in countries such as UK and US, with mental health perceptions that is common, associated with a view that emphasises EDs as the consequence of moral failings. Crisafulli, von Holle, and Bulik, (2008) as cited by Shepherd and Seale (2010) state that these perceptions could allow the health care professional to blame the individual for their ED, as it play part in the socio-cultural causation instead the biological and genetics causation.

There are some people that feel afraid in what they eat and becoming overweight. It is challenging to blame the media in causing and maintaining individual’s ED (Spettigue and Henderson, 2004). Majority people living in the Western countries receive streams of impression in television commercial, which most of the commercial uses young, attractive and thin women to represent their products (Abraham and Llewellyn-Jones, 2001). These messages affect teenagers when going through emotional stress as they may seek to be more independence from their family, finding their identity and to compete with their friends.

Differences between both genders

The explanation regarding to the gender differences in body dissatisfaction is that there is greater sociocultural that emphasis on the importance on physical attractiveness in girls and women (McKinley, 1999). Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann, & Ahrens (1992) state the media portray girls being thin and perfect body as a beauty standard.

Sepúlveda and Calado (2012) describe that the sociocultural factors can negatively influence female, and the perceptions in male body image that can also be stereotypical ideal body representations that can be communicated though socialisation agents and especially in mass media. Sepúlveda and Calado (2012) explain how that mass media can involve in social learning theory in applying the positive and negative reinforcement of mechanism in behaviours and beliefs. Social learning theory acknowledge how the individual’s thought, affect and behaviour can be influenced by observation, as well real life experience. Social learning theory explain human behaviour by applying cognitive, behavioural and environmental determinants (Bandura, 2002).

Chapter 2: Methodology

This section will be focusing on the rationale, strategies and criteria that have been applied to help answer the research question of ‘What level of influence does the media have on eating disorders on teenagers?’ A literature-based approach will be taken.

2.1 Rationale

Literature- based approach will be suitable for this research because there are different journals that will be appropriate for the research question, which it has to be only primary data. The reason for choosing a literature-based dissertation to answer the research question is because using empirical approach, such as questionnaires and interviews, it would have been difficult to analyse the primary data and it is also time consuming. Literature-based approach does not require ethical approval. ED is a sensitive subject, so be using 2^nd data you are avoiding harm for participants. Literature- based dissertation will be successful for the research question based on the how does the media influence eating disorders as it will provide appropriate material towards the research question by examining journal articles and database at the DMU library.

The strength of using literature-based dissertation is that the findings can be appropriate with the right sources of information. A literature- based dissertation is useful because it does not need a data collection and ethical forms to accept the proposal to be approved, which is time consuming.  Due to the ED sensitive topic, it is not appropriate for empirical research by an inexperienced researcher to be carried out, but the literature-based approach allows these topics to be addressed as patterns in the data. The themes in the data will be a quick progression in the area of gaining an understanding of current state of researcher on similarities and differences. The weakness of using library-based dissertation is that the data may not produce enough pieces of evidence to explain the complex issues of the research and data; therefore, this could make the research difficult to analyse. The search is limited to free and open access journals, only in English so I may not have found all relevant articles.

2.2 Alternative approach

The empirical approach is based on primary data that uses questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. The empirical approach focuses on the consent and ethical approval for a research question. The research is based on teenagers, which I will need to inform a consent form, and under 18’s will need parental discussions.  The problem is that the requirement to sign the consent form may prompt rather than alleviate concerns on the part of perspective participants; therefore they may end up not taking part (Bryman, 2012). This may because the topic may be sensitive towards the participants or they may not have time to participant in the project such as in ED research.  It will be difficult to recruit, as often it is a secretive disorder because people will not want to admit it so they may not feel comfortable to take part. If an empirical approach were used, it would investigate qualitative data because it would have used a semi- structured interview to be able to collect information about the participants. This would allow the participants to answer the questions on how they feel about how the levels of influences the media has on eating disorders.

2.3 Search strategy

The search strategy was used at De Montfort University Library Catalogue for journal articles using the search terms (See Table 1) ‘body image’ and ‘body esteem’, ‘media’ and ‘eating disorder’ and ‘media effects’.  The reason why I used different key terms is because there was a lack of information in the database. These were the terms that provided in relevant journal articles to examine.

I created a literature search table. The majority of the databases that I used were linked to De Montfort University database and Google Scholar. Some articles were relevant to my research question but many articles did not focus on the topic and so were excluded. There were two articles that I used to examine were found in reference chaining. However, I did not use any books because of the collection of primary data only.  The table below shows the journal articles that will be used in the dissertation. The number of hits represents the search results prior to the exclusion and inclusion criteria being applied.