#Burrowhead originates from the blending of the last name of the Cincinnati Bengals (Bengals) quarterback Joe Burrow, and the name of the Kansas City Chiefs (Chiefs) home stadium Arrowhead, creating a portmanteau.
A portmanteau is defined as ‘a word or part of a word made by combining the spellings and meanings of two or more other words or word parts’ (Merriam-Webster)
Mike Hilton coined the term burrowhead when being asked about the upcoming game against the Chiefs (ESPN), it has since turned into a well known, well used hashtag within the Bengals community (known as who dey nation.) It is usually used to incite excitement, for trash talk, socialising within the community, and more.
But what does this hashtag do?
It identifies members of who dey nation, it is often accompanied with photos of Joe Burrow, memes of the Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and general trash talk. It brings who dey nation together, notably when the Bengals are playing at Arrowhead, or when the Chiefs are having an unsuccessful game (i.e not playing well.) #Burrowhead will begin to circulate on social media websites, mainly on X (formerly twitter,) although it does make appearances on others as well: instagram, facebook, etc.
Adamska (2015) states that hashtags can be used for ‘various social campaigns… sometimes there are more dubious campaigns,’ this is similar to the function of #Burrowhead. This being to bring the fans together, and essentially rub it in the faces of Chiefs fans that Joe Burrow is the only active quarterback to beat Patrick Mahomes on his home turf.
Furthermore, it follows Laucuka’s (2018) assessment that hashtags are used to socialise, this one in particular gets the Bengals community talking, and sometimes fans of other NFL teams get involved - due to the Chiefs being a highly disliked team, and this hashtag being something that very quickly gets on their nerves.
Cunha et al (2011) suggests that hashtags are used to ‘promote specific topics and people’ and ‘for promotion and publicity.’ #Burrowhead conforms to these, with the hashtag itself being promotion for Joe Burrow, bringing attention to him and the 2022 game in which the Bengals won, sending the team to the coveted Super Bowl. This hashtag promotes discussions surrounding whether Mahomes truly is a good quarterback, or does he just have multiple factors working in his favour? This was questioned further following the Chiefs' performance against the Philadelphia Eagles in this year's Super bowl.
In terms of Tagg 2015’s metafunctions #Burrowhead showcases the interpersonal aspect, showing affiliation to the Cincinnati Bengals, it is often used in a textual way - helping the community to search relevant tweets and is used as punctuation within their tweets. And finally it is ideational, it indicates that anything following will be in reference to the Bengals and Chiefs rivalry.
Overall, #Burrowhead perfectly demonstrates the functions of a hashtag, bringing a community together, allowing them to connect in new ways and share their thoughts and affiliations.
References:
Adamska, K. (2020) 'Hashtag, czyli komunikat? Rola i funkcje hashtagów na Twitterze', Studia Medioznawcze, 3, pp. 61–70 Available at: https://doi.org/10.33077/uw.24511617.ms.2015.62.525.
Baby, B. (2023) Mike Hilton, Bengals confident for title game at 'Burrowhead'. Available at: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35532000/mike-hilton-bengals-confident-title-game-burrowhead (Accessed: 25 Feb 2025).
Cunha, E.,L.T.P., Magno, G., Comarela, G., Almeida, V., Gonçalves, M. and Benevenuto, F. (2011) Analyzing the dynamic evolution of hashtags on Twitter: a language-based approach, pp. 58–65.
Laucuka, A. (2018). Communicative Functions of Hashtags. Economics and Culture, 15(1), 56–62.
Merriam-Webster. (no date). Portmanteau. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/portmanteau (Accessed: February 26, 2025.)
Tagg, C., (2015.) Exploring digital communication: Language in action. Routledge
Has anything changed since the 1940s or the days of 'heroin chic'
Eating disorders (ED) have been an ongoing issue, long before social media came into play, but in a much different way. An example of this is Kate Beavis who comments that after the war and with rationing finishing ‘‘women were now encouraged to trim their figures with beach-body diets, pre-Christmas diets and even the steak diet! The difference with previous decades was about being trim and having the perfect body. Many adverts reinforced that we should be slim for our man or look perfect to get one.’’
This has continued to occur with celebrity culture, tabloids and magazines, but now with the rise of social media those struggling with eating disorders can now come together and form their own communities where they can encourage these disordered behaviours. As well as the rise of the digital food culture this is seen through a conceptual lens by Feldman and Goodman (2021) as being ‘invested in locating food’s significance through its relationship with and through the digital.’
In reference to the United States of America, Wade 2011 claims that up to 20 million women and 10 million men will suffer at some point in their life with an eating disorder (around 10% of the population that year.) Showing that these disorders affect a large portion of the population, especially now.
Eating disorders are often classified by the disordered eating patterns one takes on: anorexia (reducing food intake), and bulimia (purging any intake of food,) just to name two.
Hesse-Biber et al (2006) make comment on the diet culture popularised at the time, and disputing the idea that eating disorders are solely a mental health disorder, instead they are also socially motivated. They say eating disorders are ‘culturally-induced diseases promoted partly by economic and social institutions that profit from the “cult of thinness” promoted by the mass media.’
This can be noted to have continued through to now, an example of this is Taylor Swift. She is a celebrity who has not been treated kindly by the media, especially in terms of her body. In 2020 she spoke to Variety stating “a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or… someone said that I looked pregnant … and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.” This is a prime example of how social media, tabloids, and news outlets continue to cause damage, often making comments on celebrities' bodies when they gain weight claiming they're pregnant, with no basis to that other than them having gained weight. This then causes readers to look at themselves, and question, do they look pregnant? Is their stomach too big? Potentially encouraging them to partake in disordered eating.
With social media it allows (as mentioned before) those who have eating disorders to come together and form their own communities, the two biggest social medias where this occurs are X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit.
Reddit has subreddits, these are areas which are focused on specific topics. For the ED community they have r/EDAnonymous, which has 142 thousand members, for more general eating disorder content and confessions, with more specific subreddits such as r/AnorexiaNervousa which has 64 thousand members. Here they often give support to others, and advice, with a limit on encouraging unhealthy behaviours.
This is far different to X, ED communities are rampant, the largest one being ‘starving, interrupted’ which has since been removed for violating community guidelines but when using the Internet Archive WayBack Machine, it shows that on September 3 2024 there were 161.1 thousand members, however there is now ‘starving interrupted 2.0’ ‘hungry caterpillars’ ‘EDTW’ and far more.
In these ones they encourage the bad habits, giving each other tips on how to be ‘better’ at their disorders. These member numbers may not be accurate to those interacting with these communities as you do not need to join to post, like, comment, or repost. And because of these factors, it could be considered that this is far worse than the ‘herion chic’ (Tee 2021) of the 2000s.
Topham (2024) discusses that with the use of social media and the want for that picturesque healthy life instead ‘weight loss and appearance are downplayed as motivations for engaging in health and wellness.’ Extreme weight loss is not seen as serious. And that there is now a labour dedicated to denying any disordered eating allegations. Now social media - specifically for this study ‘What I eat in a day’ videos, allows diet choices to be narrated ‘and rationalised to achieve the illusion of the ‘disappearance’ of diet culture.’ whilst continuing to perpetuate it.
As well as this the previously mentioned communities often feature ‘the emergence of meanspo–extremely aggressive, harsh, or abusive comments directed toward self or others in an effort to promote disordered eating behaviors‘ (Nova et al 2022) furthermore they found that ‘this use of personal insults that border on emotional abuse are likely to have an impact on the clinical manifestations of eating disorders, as negative feedback has been implicated in the development of increased body dissatisfaction‘ resulting in those participating being ‘more likely to report higher eating restraint’
There can be differences in the ED content viewed based on the social media website,
Branley and Covey 2017 did a focused study of Tumblr and X,. They found that ‘extreme pro-ana posts were in the minority compared to anti-ana and pro-recovery.’ With the pro-ana (pro anorexia) content being more common on X, and the pro recovery content occurring more on Tumblr.
Overall, it does not appear as though diet culture or eating disorders are going to disappear anytime soon, but there are ways in which our social media driven society allows them to worsen, and be encouraged in new ways. But as of now, many steps can be taken by these websites to reduce or remove said content, like X did with removing ‘starving interrupted.’
Behavioral Nutrition. (no date). The prevalence of eating disorders in America. Available at: https://behavioralnutrition.org/the-prevalence-of-eating-disorders-in-america/ [Accessed 26 February 2025].
Branley, D.B. and Covey, J. (2017) 'Pro-ana versus Pro-recovery: A Content Analytic Comparison of Social Media Users’ Communication about Eating Disorders on Twitter and Tumblr', Frontiers in Psychology, 8 Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01356.
Feldman, Z. and Goodman, M.K. (2021) 'Digital food culture, power and everyday life', European Journal of Cultural Studies, 24(6), pp. 1227–1242 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494211055501.
Hesse-Biber, S., Leavy, P., Quinn, C.E. and Zoino, J. (2006) 'The mass marketing of disordered eating and Eating Disorders: The social psychology of women, thinness and culture', Women's Studies International Forum, 29(2), pp. 208–224 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2006.03.007.
Internet Archive. (2024). [Community on X]. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20240903133551/https://x.com/i/communities/1615598038562799616 [Accessed 26 February 2025].
Nova, F.F., Coupe, A., Mynatt, E.D., Guha, S. and Pater, J.A. (2022) 'Cultivating the Community: Inferring Influence within Eating Disorder Networks on Twitter', Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(GROUP) Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3492826.
Tee, A. (2021). The toxic body image of the 2000s. Medium. Available at: https://alextolhurst.medium.com/the-toxic-body-image-of-the-2000s-165c928b50c3#:~:text=I%20mean%2C%20the%20phrase%20%E2%80%9Cheroin,of%20a%20hardcore%20drug%20user[Accessed 26 February 2025].
Topham, J. (2024) '‘Relaxed Restriction’: ‘What I Eat In A Day’ Videos and the Persistence of Diet Culture', in Smith, N., Southerton, C. and Clark, M. (eds.) Researching Contemporary Wellness Cultures Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 127–138.
Wade, T.D., Keski-Rahkonen, A. & Hudson, J. (2011). 'Epidemiology of eating disorders'. In M. Tsuang and M. Tohen (Eds.), Textbook in Psychiatric Epidemiology (3rd ed.), pp. 343-360.
Willman, C. (2020). Taylor Swift opens up about her struggles with eating disorder in Netflix documentary 'Miss Americana'. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2020/music/news/taylor-swift-eating-disorder-netflix-documentary-miss-americana-1203478047/ [Accessed 26 February 2025].
The news of politician JD Vance having intercourse with his couch hit X (formerly twitter) like a storm, everyone was talking about it, and everyone had their own theories.
But did he really do that? Or was it fake news?
Fake news is defined by Chu et al (2012) as ‘fabricated news with the purpose of misleading people’ with two essential parts needed: the factual inaccuracies of the information shared, and the intent to mislead audiences.
Two types of false information exist - misinformation which refers to unintentionally misleading information, and disinformation which is intentionally misleading information.
With this knowledge it may still be difficult to decipher whether this story in particular is fake, ignoring the general outlandish nature of the claim (politicians have been known to do peculiar things, such as UK Politician David Cameron being accused of having intercourse with a dead pig head.)
To aid with deciphering, Jaster and Lanius (2018) have their own methods used to deem something as fake news, these being
Its truth value
Its content
Its distribution channel
The way in which they are presented
The intent of the publisher
These are important to consider as the origin of this story is from a twitter account, not the most trustworthy source of news. The original poster included a fake citation within their tweet, as well as following it up with a meme - "signaled that he was joking when he followed up the tweet with… meme." (Liles 2024,) indicating the unserious nature of the tweet.
Vamanu (2019) and Maiba (2021) also have created a criteria for fake news, focusing on linguistic features often present:
Photos or videos - to gain attention
Emotional or persuasive language
Repetition
Expressive and colloquial language
Involvement of social groups
Indifference to logical reasoning
One-sided argument
Applying these, the original tweet showcases having a photo, specifically a meme, following it and using expressive/colloquial language - for example the use of fucking instead of intercourse, unlikely for a trustworthy news source.
Snopes is a well known fact checking website with Jordan Liles being the one to tackle this rumour, it was overall deemed as false. The original tweet included a fake citation, immediately indicating that the claim as a whole may be fake. They also noted that this tweet was published the same day that JD Vance was confirmed as running for Vice President, which is significant as Vance’s name would be trending online. As well as this they ensured by reading all available versions of Vance’s memoir, with no mentions of his supposed couch endeavours.
This fake news spread like wildfire throughout twitter, making some believe it as everyone was talking about it. And comedian John Oliver stating ‘If you ask me to draw a man that fucks his couch, 10 times out of 10, I’m drawing this guy,’ (Vanity Fair) of course this added fuel to the fire. Some still believe this claim, showing the power of fake news.
Chu, S.K.W., Xie, R. and Wang, Y., (2021). Cross‐language fake news detection. Data and Information Management, 5(1), pp.100‐109.
Jaster, R. and Lanius, D., (2018). What is fake news?. Versus, 47(2), pp.207-224.
Liles, J. (2024). No, JD Vance did not say he had sex with couch cushions. Available at: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jd-vance-couch-cushions/. Accessed 26 February 2025.
Maiba, V. (2021). Fake discourse in the space of mass media and media linguistic practices. E3S Web of Conferences, 273, 11033.
Murphy, C. (2024). John Oliver called JD Vance’s campaign to ask if he’d ever had sex with a couch. Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/john-oliver-called-jd-vances-campaign-to-ask-if-hed-ever-had-sex-with-a-couch?srsltid=AfmBOopp-Xez0gzLfcjVOye4FTsl-kTfcxx-H2DaDqYh47u1f0tFd7mN. Accessed 26 February 2025.
Vamanu, I. 2019. Fake News and Propaganda: A Critical Discourse Research Perspective. Open Information Science, 3(1), pp. 197-208.
