Validating illness: Internet activism in response to institutional discourse
Laurie B. Cubbison
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 2000; pp: 198
- Advisor: Porter, James; Harkin, Patricia
- Source: DAI-A 62/06, p. 2097, Dec 2001
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric And Composition (0681); Mass Communications (0708)
- ProQuest Document Number:
- ISBN: 0-493-28663-2
- UMI Number:
Abstract:
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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role played by activism in Internet
support groups for people with chronic fatigue syndrome and/or fibromyalgia syndrome. Given
that discussion taking place on the support groups indicated that participants often need to
engage rhetorically with representatives of a wide variety of social institutions (such as
government agencies, medical clinics, insurance companies and the news media), the study examined
these various rhetorical situations, the role of institutions in structuring them, and the efforts
of support group participants to develop productive rhetorical strategies for dealing with them.
The study found that support group members with previous experience with these situations, whether
as professionals working within these institutions or as patients negotiating with them, described
their experiences and the resulting knowledge gained to other group members in a manner of
knowledge-making known as lore, a form of knowledge-making that was facilitated in this study
by computer-mediated communication.
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