Content Analysis of Eating Disorders Metaphorical Posts in Cyberspace

People with eating disorders express their eating pathology through metaphors. This research was conducted to explain and categorize eating disorder metaphorical posts in cyberspace. The method of this qualitative study was conventional and directed text content analysis, which was carried out by Shannon's entropy method in the period of September 2019 to May 2022. The population of this study included all messages and posts related to eating disorders that were posted or left comments on social networks. Due to the qualitative nature of this study, based on the rule of theoretical saturation and according to the opinion of experts in this field, 250 posts with psychological content were purposefully selected and analyzed. Then categories and subcategories were manually analyzed. Results indicated; metaphoric posts or messages related to eating disorders fall into two main categories of embodiment characteristics and non-embodiment metaphors source domains. On the other hand, each of these two main categories has subcategories that are separated from each other by cognitive and psychological characteristics. It seems; different messages and posts related to eating disorder metaphors need to be studied from different perspectives. Based on this, it is suggested that in future studies, these metaphorical posts should be examined according to the type of interventions effective on them.