Impact of Media on Body Image of Men – A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

Body image is an individual’s subjective impression and attitudes toward their body, including thoughts, feelings, and behaviors concerning body form, size, and attractiveness. Physique dissatisfaction, or unpleasant thoughts and emotions about one’s physique and look, is common. This condition occurs at any stage of life and affects both men and women (Fiske et al., 2014). Social media is a collection of digital platforms and applications that enable users to create, share, and interact with content and with each other through various forms of communication. It has also been demonstrated that the mass media has a detrimental effect on body image and is thought to have a ubiquitous influence in forming ideals of physical attractiveness. Males are just as likely as females to experience body image issues as a result of using social networking sites, viewing advertisements, fashion magazines etc regardless of culture or age group. There have been fewer efforts made toward the maladaptive behaviours associated with boys and men than those on social media concerning girls and women (Nagata et al., 2021). The present study aims to study the media’s effect (including both social media and mass media) on male body image concerns. The participants are Indian boys and men aged 16-35 years who have only heterosexual orientations, have never met with a mental diagnosis, and are active users of social media, purposive sampling will be implied to identify these participants, they will be from the urban metropolitan city populations either pursuing their studying or working professionals, in middle-class families. This will be done to minimise the external factors of socio-cultural and major economic disparities that might otherwise affect the study results. This will be a quasi-experimental study, implying a mixed-method approach. We will apply pre-test and post-test administration to our target population. The BSIQ – SF (Body et al.: Short Form) and the MMIS (Harrison, 2009) (would be used as a pre-test, followed by providing different visual stimuli to the controlled and experimental groups, and finally, the Modified Multidimensional Facebook Intensity Scale, alongside the other two scales as well for a post-test measure. After the experimentation, detailed semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a few of the participants who will have the highest scores for body image dissatisfaction and a few of them will have significantly good regard for their body image. All ethical measures will be taken care of during the conduction of the experiment. Through this study, we anticipate obtaining the results that show that men are as vulnerable to exposure to social media as women.