ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how health-focused participatory opportunities develop in the context of mainstream social media. It does so by specifically focusing on health issue publics forming on Twitter in relation to illness subcultures. Zooming in on one platform means failing to provide a comprehensive discussion of the contemporary social media ecosystem. Focusing on Twitter, however, allows us to explore the potential emergence of health-centred participatory dynamics in contexts that are extremely different from the more dedicated and often contained digital spaces addressed in early Internet studies (e.g. user lists, patient or carer blogs or forums) and partially replicated in similarly contained spaces in contemporary social media platforms (e.g., Facebook groups, Tumblr blogs). The chapter explores four dynamics that have so far been discussed as central to digital participation, health advocacy or both: curation, framing, storytelling, and epistemic work. It draws upon research that I conducted between 2015 and 2020 to study Twitter use in relation to the hereditary cancer condition caused by the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genetic mutations. The chapter concludes by offering a series of considerations about the relationship between mainstream social media platforms and contemporary cultures of health and illness.
