1) Our broad topic for our assignment is the negative effects Instagram has on young girls

body image. Our research question is, “What negative effects do Instagram model’s
pictures have on young girls between the ages of 10-15s body image?”

(2)
A and B)
Database Search Term(s) including connector # of
terms Articles
Communica Body image and Instagram 13
tion Source
Young girls and Instagram 1

Social Media and Body Image 69

PsycInfo Influencers and adolescents 64

Self-esteem, young girls, and social 5

media
Girls or women or females, and 166
Instagram
Web of Instagram effect on girls 20
Science
Social media effect on girls 15

Girls bodies and Instagram 40

C) Communication source: When I researched this database I kept certain words the same and
then found similar words to replace “girl.” It seemed to be that I was finding more sources when
I kept searching the words “body image” rather than words like “social media” and Instagram.”
“Body image” seems to be a relevant topic in today’s world which is why I found more results.

PsychInfo: When I researched this database I definitely changed up the words more to see if I
would get more results and for this database I found more results when I referred to the terms
“Instagram” and “girls.” It seemed like I was finding more results when referring to a specific
group of people rather than just a broad term, for example being specific by using the words
“girls, women, or females” found me more results.
Web of Science: When I researched this database I completely shifted from using terms to using
more of a phrase instead to see if that would drastically change my results, but it didn’t. I also
noticed that with this database you have to be a little more specific (in my opinion) because
when I searched a couple relevant terms I was getting 0 results.

D) I think using the Web of Science database was more useful because although it didn’t provide
me with as many results as PsycInfo, the articles that I did find seemed to be more specific and
scholarly. Meanwhile the other two had a lot of results but all very broad and kind of all over the
place. I also liked how Web of Science just had one search bar instead of the three lines to search
terms in.

3) Cohen, R., Farouldy, J., & Newton-John, T. (2019). #BoPo on instagram: An experimental
investigation of the effects of viewing body positive content on young women’s mood
and body image. New Media and Society, 21(7), 1546-1564. Doi:10.1037/t61360-000
Permalink:
https://web-b-ebscohost-com.libproxy.lib.ilstu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=10&sid=2cd7cac4-2920-4c7a-92
b8-79bae9837683%40pdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=20
19-37025-007&db=psyh

4)
While looking at this article I was able to notice that the author’s work definitely related to
rhetoric communication theory. I feel as if this theory is used in this article because it is related to
showing that social media is fake. There were a lot of reasons for why we chose this article for
our original research question. The standout reason for why this article was perfect four our
research question is because the statistics and experiments that were done were based strictly on
an Instagram trend and its particular effect on female body image. We were able to gain a lot of
knowledge on our research topic after we were able to evaluate the results from the tests done.
The experiment done in this article was a study about a specific trend that has been done recently
across social media platforms where people show kind of an expectation vs reality type of post
(mainly on Instagram). They had 305 participants who were shown three different sets of posts
following this trend. This study didn’t really give much closure to our group because the results
showed that after the experiment it actually bolstered the participants' female body satisfaction.
This was definitely an interesting conclusion to the study that I hadn’t expected. They plan on
continuing further research on this experiment to assess the full long-term effect that the study
will have on the participants. I guess one method that they used in this article is just a simple
experiment. This is definitely an appropriate and effective way to gain research on this topic.
Overall, this article offered very good insight on real statistics and effects that specific Instagram
trends can have on female body image so in the end this was a great article for us to use.
5) Kleemans, M., Daalmans, S., Carbaat, I., & Anschütz, D. (2016). Picture Perfect: The Direct
Effect of Manipulated Instagram Photos on Body Image in Adolescent Girls. Media Psychology,
21(1), 93-110. doi:10.1080/15213269.2016.1257392
Permalink:
https://i-share-isu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CARLI_ISU/1fv1q1p/cdi_crossref_primary_10_10
80_15213269_2016_1257392

The title of this article is, “Picture Perfect: The Direct Effect of Manipulated Instagram Photos
on Body Image in Adolescent Girls” This is perfectly related to our research question because
it’s specifically focusing on body image in adolescent girls. This article has the same criteria and
key words that we used for our research question. Some of these key terms from question 2 that
are also in this article include body image, instagram, influencers, and adolescents. In this article
they focus more on manipulated Instagram photos, which is something that provides new
information for our own topic. Most influencers' posts are photoshopped or touched up, leading
to a lower body image in young girls, but they don’t know that those models don’t even look like
that either. This article found that girls looking at manipulated photos resulted in lower self
esteem, but girls looking at the same photo unphotoshopped, didn’t have as much of a negative
effect.

6.) After reading through the articles and digesting it, we have created a new research question.
The question is, Have the womens’ confidence, who were negatively affected by Instagram at a
young age, shifted since they have grown up and matured?