ABSTRACT
Rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) scholars have long looked at online discourse as a research site and information in online spaces as research artifacts to understand communication practices around different health conditions (e.g., diabetes or breast cancer patients). However, RHM has looked at online health forums in isolation. One way to address this concern is through theory-building. In this chapter, we build the theory of collective intimacy that has three characteristics, distributed, relational, and affective. We offer an extended definition of collective intimacy as a theory that draws attention to the complex ontologies of online health forums and offer ways that rhetorical scholars in RHM and mental health rhetoric can consider using this theory in their own work.
