Abstract
Social networking sites have swiftly become a salient venue for the production and consumption of neoliberal health discourse by individuals and organisations. These platforms offer both opportunities for individuals to accrue coping resources and a means for organisations to promote their agendas to an online audience. Focusing specifically on diabetes, this article examines the representation of social actors and interactional styles on three organisational Pages on Facebook. Drawing on media and communication theories, we situate this linguistic analysis in relation to the communicative affordances employed by these organisations as they publish content online. Diabetes sufferers are represented as an at-risk group whose vulnerabilities can be managed through forms of participation specific to the respective organisation. More popular diabetes Pages draw on the opportunities for social interaction afforded by Facebook and combine informational and promotional content to foster communication between the organisation and its audience. By encouraging reflexive management of diabetes risks, these Pages contribute to the construction of ‘biological citizens’ who interweave habitual interactions on social networking sites with responsible self-care, consumption of health information and health activism.
Highlights
Introduction and research questionsRecent UK health policy has represented health information as a precursor to patient empowerment and the public’s ability to choose healthier lifestyle options and ‘cope better with any long-term condition or disability’ (Department of Health, 2012: 14)
While Facebook may afford individuals with diabetes increased opportunities to seek informational and social support through online networking, this medium operates under a ‘dual economy of freedom and constraint’ (Chouliaraki, 2012:1) in which online participation is shaped by the interests of organisations who operate through it, as well as Facebook itself
In identifying the use of synthetically personalised discourse and features of advertising and lifestyle discourse to deliver messages of individual responsibility, we provide evidence that these Facebook Pages further the ‘infiltration of neoliberal, marketdriven values and ethics into day-to-day relationships’ in the context of diabetes support (Marwick, 2010: 443-4)
Summary
Introduction and research questionsRecent UK health policy has represented health information as a precursor to patient empowerment and the public’s ability to choose healthier lifestyle options and ‘cope better with any long-term condition or disability’ (Department of Health, 2012: 14). Biological citizenship is practiced through a range of different personal and collective activities related to health, including consuming and producing health information to manage present and future medical concerns, contributing capital and labour to illness-related organisations and actively minimising the risks of future illness through medical intervention and lifestyle adjustments. These activities, they argue, reconfigure everyday social behaviours, commercial practices and ethical values in relation to health and medical risks and shape relationships of power between the individual, state and other organisations in the process
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