Why Are we Obese?

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Why Are we Obese?

Ethan VandenBosch

Biography

Ethan is a motivated Professional Communications student at Toronto Metropolitan University, eager to transition into a professional career with the ability to build long-standing relationships with internal and external partners. His project looks to analyze the media coverage and attribution of blame surrounding obesity literature over the past twelve years.

Research Summary

Body positivity and lifting up one another has become far more important in the age of social media than ever before. Despite this, the media that surrounds the ongoing obesity epidemic across North America doesn’t seem as worried to report factual information and typically can take a more degrading approach to their literature. In this assignment, a critical discourse analysis was conducted on obesity coverage in the media from 2010 to 2022 to find out what the main factors the media attribute obesity to, what characterizations are commonly associated with individuals the media consider obese, how the depiction of obesity has changed over the 12 years, and if there are any new blame frameworks emerging in the discourse. Over 50 sources across Canada and the United States were analyzed to conduct this analysis.

Tags

Health, Social Media, Culture

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