Mukbang and Disordered Eating: A Netnographic Analysis of Online Eating Broadcasts
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Mukbang and Disordered Eating: A Netnographic Analysis of Online Eating Broadcasts Mattias Strand1,2
· Sanna Aila Gustafsson3
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Mukbang is a recent Internet phenomenon in which video recordings of hosts eating large amounts of food are streamed on an online video platform. It originated in South Korea around 2014 and has since become a global trend. The aim of this study was to explore how viewers of mukbang videos relate their audience experiences to symptoms of disordered eating. A qualitative analysis of YouTube comments and Reddit posts on the topic of mukbang and disordered eating was performed, employing a netnographic approach. Two overarching themes were identified: a viewer perspective, by which users discuss mukbang without describing any personal involvement, and a participant perspective, by which users describe their own experiences of affects and behaviors in response to watching mukbang. Several topical categories emerged, describing how watching mukbang can both limit and increase eating, reduce loneliness and guilt, and become self-destructive. For some, mukbang appears to be a constructive tool in increasing food intake, preventing binge eating, or reducing loneliness; for others, it is clearly a destructive force that may motivate restrictive eating or trigger a relapse into loss-of-control eating. Notably, watching mukbang is not necessarily experienced as either helpful or destructive, but instead as simultaneously useful and hurtful.
& Mattias Strand [email protected] 1
Stockholm Centre for Eating Disorders, Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 27B, 118 50 Stockholm, Sweden
2
Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, & Stockholm Health Care Services, Stockholm County Council, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
3
¨ rebro University, University Health Care Research Center, Faculty of Medicine and Health, O ¨ rebro, Sweden 701 82 O
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Cult Med Psychiatry
Keywords Eating disorders · Disordered eating · Binge eating · Body image · Social media
Introduction: South Korean Eating Broadcasts Gone Global The word mukbang (먹방; also stylized as muk-bang or meokbang) is a Korean abbreviation for ‘eating show’—a concise summary of this recent Internet phenomenon. A mukbang is a video recording of a host occasionally preparing or arranging but most importantly eating large amounts of food, usually while leisurely chatting with the audience, that is streamed or posted on an online video platform. The amounts of food ingested in a typical mukbang are conspicuously large; sometimes this involves large amounts of a single food-item (such as ramen noodles or fried chicken) but a mukbang may, for example, also consist of multiple doubleportion dishes. Many South Korean mukbang hosts originally started their broadcasting careers on the Korean live video platform AfreecaTV. However, the mukbang phenomenon has rapidly spread on a global level and a large number of mukbang videos can also be found on internationally oriented platforms such as YouTub
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