Abstract

​

Online health communities (OHCs) have become an important realm of online social interactions that attract many patients and Internet users in general. OHCs are rich venues of patient‐to‐patient, patient‐to‐practitioner and even practitioner‐to‐practitioner interaction. They are based on various platforms (e.g., online forums, social network sites), connect different groups of people (e.g., patients, practitioners, associations), have various organizational forms of interaction (e.g., discussion boards, Q&A consultation services), and are focused on a rich array of topics and interests (e.g., rare diseases, mental health issues, self‐help groups). OHCs can be seen as places of action, where wider societal processes, such as increased risks (financial, social, personal, and health), increased reflexivity, and dissolution of authorities meet main actors of the healthcare system – primarily patients and practitioners. Consequently, OHCs are very dynamic and insightful places, where variety of social processes can be detected that are linked to tensions between different streams of knowledge, tensions between low and high e‐health literacy, conflicts between expert and patient expertise, positive and negative aspects of patient empowerment etc. A rich stream of research has demonstrated that OHCs are important for patients in terms of: providing them with resources and support for health decision‐making, providing access to health related experiences and knowledge, finding meaning and even organizing for collective (political) actions. Undoubtedly, OHCs are important for patient empowerment. Even more, empirical evidence shows that also practitioners can get empowered through experiencing online interactions with patients and addressing their health‐related needs. On the other hand, recent studies reveal that patient empowerment can be problematic– if it is based on misinformation, it can lead to distrust in expert knowledge. Thus, ideological siloes can form among patients with relatively low e‐health literacy, leading to bad health decisions and unhealthy lifestyles behaviour. This session is intended to address the above tensions and is open, but not limited to papers that intersect and/or interconnect with the following questions and topics:

• Theoretical models for understanding the socio‐psychological dynamics of OHCs and/or empirical applications

• What happens when patient's empowerment is based on distrust and misinformation shared in OHCs

• Discovering tensions between OHCs subgroups in terms of credibility of knowledge and trust in health experts

• Personal and professional empowerment of practitioners participating in OHCs

• Impact of patient‐practitioner interaction in OHCs on offline (face‐to‐face) patient‐practitioner relationship

• Integration of OHCs with other health technologies with the purpose to improve experience, trust and knowledge among patients and practitioners

• Styles and types of participation in OHCs

• International comparisons of different OHCs

• The potential of OHCs for co‐creation processes for higher involvement of patients into healthcare policies and business

• How can processes in OHCs inform regulators, policy and health decision makers

The session is open to different studies, both empirical and theoretical and invites qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches, which address some of the above topics.

​

Session organizer(s)

​

Gregor Petrič (SL) – is an Associate Professor for Social Informatics and a Chair of Center for Methodology and Informatics at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). His research activities focus on sociological and socio‐psychological perspectives of online health communities and e‐health in general, sociology of internet, and methodology of investigating internet spaces. Recent work is focused on the issues of patient‐practitioner online interaction, tensions between expert and experiential knowledge in online health communities and paradoxes of empowerment. He regularly published in scientific journals, such as Journal of Medical Internet Research, The Information Society, Computers and Human Behavior, Cyberpsychology. He is involved into national and international scientific projects.

 

Sara Atanasova (SL) – is Research Assistant at Centre for Methodology and Informatics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). She is also currently enrolled in Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme the Humanities and Social Sciences, specifically in the study programme of Social Informatics at Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. In general her research focuses on study of the interaction between information-communication technologies (ICT) and contemporary society, social aspects of the role of ICT, online communities and social networks. Her current research topics include online health communities, (online) health communication and doctor-patient interaction.

​