Paper short abstract:

The paper provides an ethnographic overview of complexities of coronaskeptics in Poland, in relation to a long-term fieldwork on medical skepticism in digital age.

Paper long abstract:

Digitalization of knowledge means that Kazimierz can open a browser, than a search engine, type in “rush on a forearm”, go to Google Pictures and look for similarities with what his grandson developed overnight. Moreover, it means that his wife, Beata, who is equally skeptical of the public healthcare system, can pick up her smartphone, go to Facebook, and ask one of the many health advice groups, what might have caused the rush, posting pictures and detailed descriptions. “Doctors don’t have time for patients, they just cure effects, not the cause”, she says, “I want the whole truth, I want the facts”. Across the Polish-speaking Facebook, complementing the already popular health-related portals, blogs, forums, as well as Wikipedia, various self-help groups grow in number and size. Some are in favor of conventional medicine, but many are not, pointing out all those “inconvenient truths” of the “health industry”, once hidden and now finally known to people – thanks to the Internet.

I have been studying the relationship between expert authority crisis and the development of ICTS for the last couple of years. Discourses of skepticism towards conventional expert authorities – whether governmental, medical, or scientific lay within the scope of my interest. When the pandemic broke out in early 2020 I have added the coronavirus as a new case into my study. In this paper I present an insight into the complexities of coronavirus skepticism, mapping the various arguments used by my research participants to support their view on the pandemic.