Faceless: The visual representation of overweight people in Flemish and Dutch online newspapers

Abstract

We conducted a quantitative visual content analysis to examine how overweight and obese people are portrayed in online newspaper photos in the Netherlands and Flanders compared to non-overweight individuals. Overall, we found that 68% of the obese/overweight people were depicted in a stigmatizing way. Their heads were more likely to be cut out of the image, they were more often dressed sloppily and more frequently portrayed with only their lower body in comparison with non-overweight people. Furthermore, overweight people were more often associated with passive behavior and portrayed as patients in a medical environment. Tabloids were found less likely to publish stigmatizing images than broadsheets as they used more often photos supplied by the subjects themselves.

Keywords

• content analysis
• dutch-language newspapers
• obesity
• overweight
• stigmatization
• visual representation