On rhetorical distortion: Examining mutated hashtags in pro-an(orexi)a communities

In writing, rhetoric, and composition studies, researchers have examined hashtags through their collectivizing, signifying, and disrupting qualities. In this piece, we propose that hashtags can also be deployed in ways that are distortive, meaning that individuals and communities can rhetorically implement hashtags that may appear illegible to outsiders while still being meaningful to those within the group. Specifically, we carry this conversation through the context of hashtags deployed by members of the pro-anorexia (pro-ana) community/ies on the microblogging site Tumblr. While researchers in health and medical fields have found it useful to turn to studying aggregable hashtag data to make recommendations for working with at-risk populations such as these, problems can arise when these communities use distorted hashtags to avoid algorithmic detection/aggregation processes. To illustrate, collecting data from hashtags such as #anorexic may not yield useful information when members of this population might use tags such as #anar3cic to communicate with one another. Thus, we suggest that researchers of digital rhetorics and in rhetorics of health and medicine pay closer attention to the affordances of distortions, rather than dismissing them as irrelevant to larger narratives of clarity. We also end with ethical considerations that arise from focusing on the rhetorical distortions of at-risk populations.