107: Social Media & Visible Difference

Welcome back to Appearance Matters: The Podcast! In this month’s episode, Ella speaks to Research Fellow Dr Emma Waite and Visiting Professor Dr Amy Slater from the Centre for Appearance Research about their work on social media and visible difference as part of the VTCT Foundation Programme of Research at CAR. They are also joined by Laure Dedecker, a PhD student at the Media Psychology Lab at KU Leuven in Belgium who researches the role of social media in body image development among young individuals with a visible difference. They talk about the social media experiences of people with visible differences, how social media might be used in a positive way, and discuss Australia’s new social media ban for under 16s. The social media resources discussed will be coming soon to the Visible Difference Support Hub: https://visibledifferencesupporthub.com/ Journal article (Guest et al., 2025) exploring the experiences of adults with visible differences in relation to social media: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0324938 Journal article (Dedecker et al., 2025) examining content and responses to influencers with visible different: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1740144525000725?via%3Dihub If you’re interested in finding out more about the Appearance Matters Conference, hosted by the Centre for Appearance Research (9th – 11th of June 2026), click here: https://www.uwe.ac.uk/research/centres-and-groups/appearance/news-and-events/am-conference Cover image by Armin Rimoldi via Pexels Music by Sian Evans & John Landau: toplinefilm.com Episode developed and produced by Ella Guest