Digital Media and Participatory Cultures of Health and Illness

This book looks at the complex scenario of platforms, practices, and content of contemporary digital communication to map and interpret emerging forms of digitally enhanced health activism.

"The everyday use of digital and social media platforms has major implications for the production, seeking, and sharing of health information, and raises important questions about the dynamics of health peer support, power relations, trust, privacy, and the quality of health information disseminated across these platforms. This book looks at the complex scenario of platforms, practices, and content of contemporary digital communication to map and interpret emerging forms of digitally enhanced health activism. Drawing on empirical research, the book provides a critical discussion of citizens'' social media usage, from the rise of the e-patient; the emergence of digitally-driven forms of peer-to-peer health care on specialised and mainstream social media platforms; the intersection of mainstream and social media practices in the development of health public debate; the emergence of patient networks alongside patient organisations; and the most contemporary instances of digitally-enhanced and crowdsourced health activism"--