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- Convenors:
-
Xu Liu
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
Matteo Valoncini (Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna)
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- Format:
- Panel+Roundtable
- Stream:
- Digital lives
- Location:
- B2.51
- Sessions:
- Thursday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
The pandemic polarised one's uncertain sense of health around the technological and digital transition in health discourse. With a focus on digitalised narrations, we invite scholars to discuss the regeneration and reconstruction of "health" in different landscapes of uncertainties.
Long Abstract:
It seems clear that a paradigm change is close: individuals perceive the uncertainty of war, Covid-19 and thus the economy in more tangible aspects. We are living a crisis of presence - in the word of Ernesto De Martino - where our way of being in the world is no longer taken for granted, the habitus has been affected. Assuming the concept of health as a socially generated cultural construct - considering the Geertzian symbolic dimension and Farmer's social production of illness - in this landscape, the technological transition is certainly affecting habitus and discourses around health. Referring to Nikolas Rose's molecular biopolitics and somatic individuality, digitalised health present how bodies, individuals, medical practitioners, and health authorities are resituated within different uncertainties. Here, how the narrations of health incite or transform one's sense of uncertainty show the tendency of 'flattened' biomedical epistemology and the somatic sense of ourselves. Such narrations work as a lens, reflecting the agencies and the embodiment of biopower from different perspectives. We then invite scholars to discuss how this "health" construct is regenerated and reconstructed in a landscape of uncertainties that includes the digital. For individuals, medical/healthcare professionals, and health authorities/governments, how does the uncertainty of health emerge through the digitalisation process and get embodied in different modes of narration? As different 'stakeholders' in the digitalised domain of health and illness, how does each side perceive the changing uncertainties and, potentially, utilise such uncertainties in their different positions of producing biomedical knowledge?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 8 June, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
This study mainly using ethnography to record and investigate the COVID information in China's hottest social platform and to see how this internet information impact the healthcare choices and shape the health of Chinese migrants living in the UK during COVID-19 period.
Paper long abstract:
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, China has published ten versions of treatment handbooks, and different local governments in China has published their treatment guidance. Among these handbooks and guidance, strategies like ‘zero-tolerance’ and using traditional Chinese medicine to prevent treat COVID have been identified as quite unique that were not used by other countries, and such medical approaches have not only been impacting people living in China but also Chinese migrants living abroad. The overseas Chinese browsed the different and changing information online and their healthcare choices may be somehow impacted by information from China.
The main focus of this study is to understand how online COVID information from China impacts Chinese migrants in the UK during the pandemic. The ethnography work of this study was conducted both online and onsite. The online ethnography was employed as the first method. The online part was conducted at the most popular social platform, Weibo, in China. Through observing the trending words and people’s discussion about them, data were collected for discourse analysis. Also, onsite ethnography was taken in a Chinese medicine clinic in London to see the healthcare options of Chinese migrants when facing COVID, and if such options were influenced by information from China. This study then used such data to analyse the role of culture in pandemic, how different culture clash to influence people’s health needs, and how migrant identity shaped health of Chinese migrants in the UK during the COVID.
Magdalena Góralska (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
Using an example of Lyme disease, this paper speaks on the dynamics of health knowledge exchange in the digital age, showing how online communication can amplify the controversial and the uncertain when it comes to complex medical issues.
Paper long abstract:
Lyme disease rises controversies on several levels. Whether it comes to prevention, disease detection, or cure, multiple areas of uncertainty bring around affects and emotions, that influence the social perception of borreliosis. In Poland, informal health advice flourishes predominantly through Facebook groups and pages. The platform is the country’s key social medium and constitutes its networked public sphere. Those seeking information on Lyme disease venture online, seeking advice that would counterweight their sense of uncertainty.
My long-term, ethnographic fieldwork across the Polish media-scape suggests that online platforms play a crucial role in helping to address issues straining the national healthcare system. Social media make it possible for hundreds of thousands of Internet users to take part in informal networks of knowledge exchange and indirectly undermine health-related knowledge hierarchies. Based on preliminary analysis, this paper will provide insights into how Internet users navigate controversial medical topics such as borreliosis, trying to minimize the sense of uncertainty through online patient cooperation.
Xu Liu (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I reflect on the online narrations of Covid-19 infections in China after the government abolished its 'Zero-Covid' policy. I examine how the narrations related to Covid-19 symptoms amongst online contexts constituted individuals’ re-construction and re-recognisation of the pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I reflect on the online narrations related to Covid-19 infections in China after the government abolished its strict control measures named the 'Zero-Covid' policy (清零政策). In particular, I examine how the massive emergence of narrations related to Covid-19 symptoms amongst online contexts – including social media trending and keyword searching – constituted individuals’ re-construction and re-recognisation of the pandemic. I conduct the case study about major platforms’ ‘outbreak index’ (疫情指数) in two aspects: the platforms’ methodologies of presenting the summarising the Covid-related narrations; and how individuals actually regarded such narrations during experiencing the massive outbreak. During this period, the uncertainty of Covid-19 transmission became viral, especially embodied within the public’s curiosity and anxiety about the massive transmissions after the National Health Committee (国家卫健委, the highest authority of health affairs) cancelled most of the regular tests and its daily update of infection data. Unlike the ‘Zero-Covid’ period, in which the government forcibly conducted strict infection surveillance and corresponding restrictions, the absence of both the government’s intervention and the information disclosure of outbreaks has contrasted with the public’s reactions, which were fundamentally based on how one had actually encountered and experienced the infection on themselves. The presentation and utilisation of Covid-related online narrations show that the government’s authoritarian indoctrination of ‘how to manage the pandemic’ went lost, while individuals were increasingly facing the uncertainty of how to take their 'self-care' during the outbreaks.