Social Function of Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Bulimia Castilian Internet Forums

Abstract

Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia blogs are websites antirecovering where participants promote eating disorders, they interchange experiences and provide emotional support to others. There are few research about these sites in Spanish, whereby present study aimed to describe social function of Pro- Ana and Pro-Mia blogs. For this purpose, messages posted in 12 of these sites where analyzed through Grounded Theory method. Results, organized in two main categories – 1) ""Being Ana"" and 2) ""Blog as a virtual shelter"", showed that eating disorders are experienced as a painful but worthy decision, whose difficulties are coped by the support provided in these sites