ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the content of the book. It does so by first presenting “five pandemic snapshots”, namely five pictures marking different milestones during the first year of the Covid–19 pandemic. These snapshots respectively capture the first lockdown in the city of Wuhan in China, initial social media conversations about the pandemic’s coverage in the UK, online deliberations leading to the emergence of the label “Long Covid”, the global debate about the use of digitised track and trace systems to contain the spread of the pandemic, and social media dynamics relevant to Covid scepticism and counter campaigns. Each snapshot ends with a question centred on the role of digital media in participatory cultures of health and illness. These questions will serve as drivers of the book, with their answers emerging in the pages to follow and coming together in the conclusions. The remainder of the chapter discusses the content of the book as centred on “participation”, “participatory cultures”, and “health and illness”, defines its scope, and presents its overall structure.
