Paper short abstract:

The aim with this paper is to analyze how medical knowledge production can be challenged by people in social media movements. I examine testimonies of Swedish health care encounters, shared by patients on social media, using the method of digital ethnography and the concept epistemic injustice.

Paper long abstract:

The aim with this paper is to analyze how medical knowledge production in the context of Swedish health care encounters can be challenged by people participating in social media movements. The data consists of observations on the social media platform Instagram, focused on a number of Swedish so called hashtags #. Through the method of digital ethnography and framework of networked sociality, I examine testimonies of health care encounters, shared from a patient perspective via these hashtags. Two examples are #alltserfintut (“everything looks fine”) in the context of postpartum injuries, and #minabiverkningar (“my side effects” of hormonal contraceptives). Through these #, Swedish women share experiences of their testimonies of pain and complications not being taken seriously by health care practitioners and a lack of knowledge about their conditions.

From an ethnological perspective, health care encounters can be understood as cultural processes, in which medical assessments are affected by social and cultural perceptions of what is “biologically natural”; by which bodies are norm within medical practice and research; and by normative views of pain among different groups. In the analysis I use an intersectional perspective, and the concept of epistemic injustice – how some patients’ testimonies are deemed more credible than others’ due to prejudices, and some conditions, bodies and experiences are more researched and better understood. With these analytical tools I analyze accounts of health care encounters shared on social media, and how their content, along with the community formed by shared experiences, can challenge epistemic injustice within health care.