Aproximación conceptual del proceso transicional de la juventud

The combinations of different methodological approaches (qualitative and quantitative) and different types of data (public blog texts and comments, questionnaire responses) used in this dissertation demonstrate the importance of approaching an (online) community from multiple perspectives. In Article 3, the corpus-linguistic analysis of the blog texts and commenting sections reveals statistically significant differences between different sub-categories of blogs (as well as individual blogs). Such differences are much less visible in qualitative analyses of small sub-corpora, such as Articles 1 and 2. However, the qualitative, discourse-analytic approach to the blog texts complements the corpus-based analysis by giving more context as to why these differences within the blogging community exist; for example, they illustrate the relevance of fat acceptance activism, in-group norms, and the bloggers’ different blogging approaches.

Similarly, the findings of the questionnaires analyzed in Article 4 present a new perspective to the inner dynamics of the blogging community. When compared to the exceedingly positive (Article 1), or at least carefully polite (Article 2)

representations of interacting with other members of the blogging community in public blog texts, the questionnaire responses are, at times, rather critical of some aspects of blogging. Thus, while the individual methods used in the study all have their strengths and weaknesses, it is the way in which they are combined to shed light onto the different aspects of the plus-size blogging phenomenon that makes them valuable tools in the case of the present study and, potentially, in future studies of other groups.

When it comes to theoretical aspects, my research challenges and expands upon previous theoretical approaches to CMD, such as Herring’s (2004) CMDA framework. I argue that the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) as a theoretical framework is more applicable to studying modern online interaction within specific social groups than the somewhat troublesome concept of the virtual community. However, I also argue that the community of practice framework needs to be slightly adapted in the case of online-based communities such as the blogging community I investigated. Because the interaction within the community takes place on multiple platforms (several blogs, other social media, face-to-face meetings), the boundaries and the membership of the community are more fluid than in a traditional community of practice, such as a workplace environment. As a result, the linguistic and discursive practices that are used to highlight community membership become particularly important. I suggest the term digitally-driven community of practice as a new theoretical concept for describing communities such as the blogging community under investigation in this dissertation.

The present study also adds to the literature on identity, gender, and the body – particularly when it comes to the interdisciplinary field of fat studies. Linguistic perspectives to fatness and identity have so far been lacking, despite LeBesco (2001, p. 77) stating a need for such perspectives almost two decades ago. Based on the results of the four articles included in this dissertation, time appears to be an important factor in the discursive and linguistic construction of plus-size and fat identities. The bloggers included in the present study rarely used the terms fatshion or fatshionista, which have been consistently used in earlier literature on plus-size fashion bloggers (Connell, 2013; Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013; Harju &

Huovinen, 2015; Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013). In the questionnaire responses, the bloggers mainly associated these terms with social media hashtags. Similarly, the term body positivity was problematized because of its commodification in the majority of the responses to the 2017 questionnaire. However, when I searched the corpus consisting of blog texts that were posted pre-2015, none of the 92

occurrences I discovered – 45 hits for “body positivity”, 47 for “body positive” – had connotations to problematic commercialism. The main issues regarding body positivity in the blog corpus were those described in Article 2; the bloggers struggled with defining body positivity. For example, can you be body positive and lose weight; what is the relationship between body positivity and health; and what type of people can be considered body positive? Thus, the concern about body positivity becoming commercialized and being taken away from the original contributors to the movement (i.e. fat acceptance activists) appears to be a more recent phenomenon. Because of this, more explicitly diachronic perspectives into how fatness and the related terminology have been talked about over time are needed in the future.

The present study can be considered a basis for a model for studying the online interaction within specific (marginalized) communities through the following framework:

In order to gain a comprehensive view of the online community, at least two different sources of data (e.g. textual material collected from online discussions and interview/survey data) should be used. This enables the researcher to combine the analysis of micro- and macro-level features of online communication. Some phenomena that are apparent in, for example, one-on-one interview material, may not be present in the online-based data, and vice versa.

A combination of multiple theoretical and methodological approaches should be applied to the data. The use of quantitative methods, such as the corpus-linguistic analysis in the present study, helps us understand how widespread specific linguistic or discursive features are, and makes it easier to avoid cherry-picking. Qualitative approaches, on the other hand, deepen the researcher’s understanding of the societal factors that affect the use of certain features within specific groups.

Interaction and in-group norms should be emphasized in the analysis. When studying marginalized groups in particular, investigating power relations should not stop at the level of the mainstream media/society vs. the marginalized group.

As illustrated in the four articles included in this dissertation, the divisions and hierarchies that can be found within the community itself may, in some cases, hinder the empowerment potential of marginalized individuals just as much as those present in mainstream media and society.

The participants’ different levels of engagement with the community and different ways of utilizing online resources also need to be acknowledged.

Exploring the layers and variety within online communities helps avoid

over-generalization when describing specific social groups. For example, based on my results, we can observe that not all plus-size bloggers prioritize fat acceptance activism, and those that do prioritize it do so in different ways and to a different extent.