scholarly journals "Struggling Right Along With You": Precarity and the Power of Medical Crowdfunding Campaign Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-41
Author(s):  
Sarah Paust
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
The U.S

Medical fundraisers—which feature patients or caregivers seeking funds for medical care, procedures, or other needs—are ubiquitous on social media, and US-based GoFundMe.com is one of the most popular platforms. The rise of platforms like GoFundMe as forms of medical care and triage is notoriously intertwined with the failures of the U.S. healthcare system. Medical crowdfunding campaigns in the U.S. span diverse topics, invoke a wide range of moral discourses, and are affected deeply by race, gender, class, religion, and (dis)ability. Drawing on insights from a discourse analysis of ten “trending” campaigns hosted on GoFundMe in 2019, I argue that campaigns are participatory narratives (because organizers, beneficiaries, and donors can interact within the campaign space) that rely upon an individualizing discourse of deservingness to create reciprocal ties within biosocial communities of care. As politico-moral projects, medical crowdfunding campaigns are at once reflective of and responsive to normalized precarity. Crowdfunding narratives are spaces in which idealized neoliberal citizen-subjects are produced and valorized collaboratively through the discursive work of campaign organizers and donors, limiting (and enabling) our imaginaries of community and care.

Choice Matters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Moore ◽  
John A. Quelch ◽  
Emily Boudreau
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Healthcare Provider ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Consumer Choice ◽  
Marketing Management ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
System P ◽  
The U.S

Choice Matters: How Healthcare Consumers Make Decisions (and Why Clinicians and Managers Should Care) is a timely and thoughtful exploration of the controversial role of consumers in the U.S. healthcare system. In most markets today, consumers have more options and autonomy than ever before. Empowered consumers easily shop around for products and services that better meet their needs, and they widely share their reviews on social media to inform and influence other consumers. Businesses have responded with better experiences and prices to compete for consumers’ business. Though healthcare has lagged behind other industries in this respect, there is a rising tide of interest in consumer choice and empowerment in healthcare markets. However, most healthcare provider organizations, individual doctors, and health insurers are unprepared to consider patients as consumers. The authors draw upon the fields of medicine, marketing, management, psychology, and public policy as they take a substantive, in-depth look at consumer choice and point out its appropriate use, as well as its limitations. This book addresses perplexing issues, such as how healthcare differs from other consumer-driven markets, how consumers make healthcare decisions, and how increased consumer choice in healthcare can not only aid and empower American consumers but also improve the overall healthcare system.

“The Man Who Would Be Popular”: An Analysis of Salman Rushdie’s Twitter Feed

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tawnya Ravy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Salman Rushdie ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Authorial Persona

In September 2011, Salman Rushdie joined the popular social network Twitter. What initially began as an experiment to tweet a narrative in 140 characters became an intensely dynamic platform for engaging with the public and cultivating an authorial persona for the well-known author. By early 2015, Rushdie had nearly 700,000 Twitter followers and regularly appeared in news media for his Twitter content. Shortly after joining Twitter, Rushdie eagerly demonstrated his knowledge of the platform and has involved some of his 1.25 million followers in debates and conversations about a wide range of issues from the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns to gun control. More than just an interesting glimpse into Rushdie’s everyday thoughts, his Twitter feed is a valuable archive. By applying qualitative discourse analysis to Rushdie’s Twitter feed, patterns in Rushdie’s use of the social network emerge, revealing some of the ways in which he attempts to engage readers, defend his positions, and cultivate his authorial legacy. This article develops careful categorization of concepts and themes which emerge from a review of Rushdie’s tweets. Applying discourse analysis to this data will enable scholars to make valuable connections between analyses of Rushdie’s published work and his social media persona. In particular, this study looks at the ways in which this noted author is attempting to disseminate his message, inhabit his role as a celebrity author, and shape his authorial legacy.

scholarly journals Explaining "-splain" in digital discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bridges
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
American English ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Digital Discourse ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Sociopolitical Climate

Combining digital discourse analysis and Citizen Sociolinguistics, methodological frames that contend with the effects of evolving digital practices, I present an approach to studying sociolinguistic trends by investigating how social media users talk about what language is doing. This approach is applicable to research on a wide range of linguistic and cultural contexts. The particular focus in this paper, however, is on U.S.-based social issues and linguistic features of American English as they appear in pieces of digital discourse from the micro-blogging platforms Twitter and Tumblr. Situated within the highly fractured sociopolitical climate of the pandemic-afflicted United States, the language under discussion provides a glimpse of some historically relevant sociocultural beliefs and attitudes towards the role of gender and racial identity in sociopolitical discourse. Focusing on uses of -splain, a metapragmatic bound morpheme, the paper demonstrates how social media users assemble lexical, discursive, and other semiotic resources as means for negotiating sociopragmatic appropriateness. The analysis shows how the usage of words like mansplain encompass the sociolinguistic process of enregisterment through practices of linguistic reflexivity, creativity, and regimentation – practices that are essential aspects of interaction and participation in social media. Using these enregistered metapragmatic words problematizes imbalances in users’ sociopragmatic ideologies, namely who can or cannot say what, to whom, and in what manner. I show how creative metapragmatic language is deployed to discuss issues of entitlement and epistemic authority in communicative dynamics. I draw on theoretical frames that reveal how the recontextualization and resemiotization of -splain words and other metapragmatic neologisms are performances of identity. I also show how splain-mediated communication facilitates users in achieving their own discursive intentions to point out language in judgmental and/or lighthearted manners. I assert that attention to metapragmatic neologisms in the perspective of Citizen Sociolinguistics enhances the analytical repertoire of digital discourse analysis.

Justification of the need to improve the legal, regulatory and methodological framework for the spread of parasitic infections in the provision of medical care

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 493-497
Author(s):  
M. M. Aslanova ◽  
T. V. Gololobova ◽  
K. Yu. Kuznetsova ◽  
Tamari R. Maniya ◽  
D. V. Rakitina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Hospital Environment ◽  
Parasitic Infections ◽  
Infusion Therapy ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Production Environment ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Medical Network ◽  
Wide Range

Introduction. The purpose of our work was to justify the need to improve the legislative, regulatory and methodological framework and preventative measures in relation to the spread of parasitic infections in the provision of medical care. There is a wide range of pathogens of parasitic infestations that are transmitted to humans through various medical manipulations and interventions carried out in various medical institutions. Contaminated care items and furnishings, medical instruments and equipment, solutions for infusion therapy, medical personnel’s clothing and hands, reusable medical products, drinking water, bedding, suture and dressing materials can serve as a major factor in the spread of parasitic infections in the provision of medical care. Purpose of research is the study of the structure and SMP of parasitic origin, circulating on the objects of the production environment in multi-profile medical and preventive institutions of stationary type in order to prevent the occurrence of their spread within medical institutions. Material and methods. The material for the study was flushes taken from the production environment in 3 multi-profile treatment and prevention institutions of inpatient type: a multi-specialty hospital, a maternity hospital and a hospital specializing in the treatment of patients with intestinal diseases for the eggs of worms and cysts of pathogenic protozoa. Results. During the 2-year monitoring of medical preventive institutions, a landscape of parasitic contamination was found to be obtained from the flushes taken from the production environment objects in the premises surveyed as part of the research work. Discussions. In the course of research, the risk of developing ISMP of parasitic origin was found to be determined by the degree of epidemiological safety of the hospital environment, the number and invasiveness of treatment and diagnostic manipulations and various medical technologies. Conclusion. It is necessary to conduct an expert assessment of regulatory and methodological documents in the field of epidemiological surveillance and sanitary and hygienic measures for the prevention of medical aid related infections of parasitic origin, to optimize the regulatory and methodological base, to develop a number of preventive measures aimed at stopping the spread of parasitic infections in the medical network.

Trend of Parental Refusal or Delay of Childhood Vaccinations

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meagan Marie Daoust
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Educational Context ◽  
Health Consequences ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Parental Refusal

The healthcare trend of parental refusal or delay of childhood vaccinations will be investigated through a complex Cynefin Framework component in an economic and educational context, allowing patterns to emerge that suggest recommendations of change for the RN role and healthcare system. As a major contributing factor adding complexity to this trend, social media is heavily used for health related knowledge, making it is difficult to determine which information is most trustworthy. Missed opportunities for immunization can result, leading to economic and health consequences for the healthcare system and population. Through analysis of the powerful impact social media has on this evolving trend and public health, an upstream recommendation for RNs to respond with is to utilize reliable social media to the parents’ advantage within practice. The healthcare system should focus on incorporating vaccine-related education into existing programs and classes offered to parents, and implementing new vaccine classes for the public.

Fake It “Till You Make It”: Debunking Fake News in a Post-Truth America

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
American People ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attacks on the media have been relentless. “Fake news” has become a household term, and repeated attempts to break the trust between reporters and the American people have threatened the validity of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In this article, the authors trace the development of fake news and its impact on contemporary political discourse. They also outline cutting-edge pedagogies designed to assist students in critically evaluating the veracity of various news sources and social media sites.

RepPer: Perception of Psychiatric Disorders on Twitter in French (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Delanys ◽  
Farah Benamara ◽  
Véronique Moriceau ◽  
François Olivier ◽  
Josiane Mothe
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Psychotic Disorders ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Annotation Scheme ◽  
Word Use ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Initial Dataset

BACKGROUND With the advent of digital technology and specifically user generated contents in social media, new ways emerged for studying possible stigma of people in relation with mental health. Several pieces of work studied the discourse conveyed about psychiatric pathologies on Twitter considering mostly tweets in English and a limited number of psychiatric disorders terms. This paper proposes the first study to analyze the use of a wide range of psychiatric terms in tweets in French. OBJECTIVE Our aim is to study how generic, nosographic and therapeutic psychiatric terms are used on Twitter in French. More specifically, our study has three complementary goals: (1) to analyze the types of psychiatric word use namely medical, misuse, irrelevant, (2) to analyze the polarity conveyed in the tweets that use these terms (positive/negative/neural), and (3) to compare the frequency of these terms to those observed in related work (mainly in English ). METHODS Our study has been conducted on a corpus of tweets in French posted between 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2018 and collected using dedicated keywords. The corpus has been manually annotated by clinical psychiatrists following a multilayer annotation scheme that includes the type of word use and the opinion orientation of the tweet. Two analysis have been performed. First a qualitative analysis to measure the reliability of the produced manual annotation, then a quantitative analysis considering mainly term frequency in each layer and exploring the interactions between them. RESULTS One of the first result is a resource as an annotated dataset . The initial dataset is composed of 22,579 tweets in French containing at least one of the selected psychiatric terms. From this set, experts in psychiatry randomly annotated 3,040 tweets that corresponds to the resource resulting from our work. The second result is the analysis of the annotations; it shows that terms are misused in 45.3% of the tweets and that their associated polarity is negative in 86.2% of the cases. When considering the three types of term use, 59.5% of the tweets are associated to a negative polarity. Misused terms related to psychotic disorders (55.5%) are more frequent to those related to mood disorders (26.5%). CONCLUSIONS Some psychiatric terms are misused in the corpora we studied; which is consistent with the results reported in related work in other languages. Thanks to the great diversity of studied terms, this work highlighted a disparity in the representations and ways of using psychiatric terms. Moreover, our study is important to help psychiatrists to be aware of the term use in new communication media such as social networks which are widely used. This study has the huge advantage to be reproducible thanks to the framework and guidelines we produced; so that the study could be renewed in order to analyze the evolution of term usage. While the newly build dataset is a valuable resource for other analytical studies, it could also serve to train machine learning algorithms to automatically identify stigma in social media.

scholarly journals A Panel Evaluation of the Changes in the General Public’s Social-Media-Following of United States’ Public Health Departments during COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 215013272199545
Author(s):  
Areej Khokhar ◽  
Aaron Spaulding ◽  
Zuhair Niazi ◽  
Sikander Ailawadhi ◽  
Rami Manochakian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Health Department ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
The Social ◽  
The U.S

Importance: Social media is widely used by various segments of society. Its role as a tool of communication by the Public Health Departments in the U.S. remains unknown. Objective: To determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social media following of the Public Health Departments of the 50 States of the U.S. Design, Setting, and Participants: Data were collected by visiting the Public Health Department web page for each social media platform. State-level demographics were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention was utilized to collect information regarding the Governance of each State’s Public Health Department. Health rankings were collected from “America’s Health Rankings” 2019 Annual report from the United Health Foundation. The U.S. News and World Report Education Rankings were utilized to provide information regarding the public education of each State. Exposure: Data were pulled on 3 separate dates: first on March 5th (baseline and pre-national emergency declaration (NED) for COVID-19), March 18th (week following NED), and March 25th (2 weeks after NED). In addition, a variable identifying the total change across platforms was also created. All data were collected at the State level. Main Outcome: Overall, the social media following of the state Public Health Departments was very low. There was a significant increase in the public interest in following the Public Health Departments during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: With the declaration of National Emergency, there was a 150% increase in overall public following of the State Public Health Departments in the U.S. The increase was most noted in the Midwest and South regions of the U.S. The overall following in the pandemic “hotspots,” such as New York, California, and Florida, was significantly lower. Interesting correlations were noted between various demographic variables, health, and education ranking of the States and the social media following of their Health Departments. Conclusion and Relevance: Social media following of Public Health Departments across all States of the U.S. was very low. Though, the social media following significantly increased during the early course of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still remains low. Significant opportunity exists for Public Health Departments to improve social media use to engage the public better.

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