Can Hashtags Promote Body Acceptance?

Abstract

Th chapter presents an empirical study on a Brazilian cyber-activism movement on Instagram associated with the hashtag #CorpoLivre (#FreeBody in Portuguese). This movement, which was established in 2018, has published more than 3,000 posts and has over 400,000 followers, disseminates anti-fatphobia and real body discourses, and promotes a positive relationship between women and their bodies beyond traditional beauty standards. The study analyses the posts made by the feminist movement on Instagram in December 2022, with a sample size of 101 posts. The study adopted the framework developed by Khurana and Knight for the analysis, which enables the classification of the sample posts in terms of message appeal, orientation, engagement, popularity, and image characteristics. This framework was used to examine the relationship between content characteristics and engagement. Additionally, the study includes a content analysis of the posts' comments, specifically evaluating the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) to assess the effectiveness of the characteristics of the posts.