Digital Nourishment
Author: Jenny Wotherspoon
Project: Digital Nourishment: Building Health Communities
This project has been a great opportunity to spend some time thinking in more depth about online communities, within a sector I may not have considered if not for the collaborative nature of Co/Lab.
Along the way, I’ve come across new research, discovered communities I’d never heard of, and ultimately been able to reflect on my own teaching and ideas around online communities. The project began with the compilation of a directory of online health communities in order to find out more about the categories individuals are gathering around. It’s not a comprehensive directory, which would not have been achievable within the realms of this project, but it’s a starting point from which this can be developed. The directory called on input from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing, online research and contributions from the public. Through this process, I came across an overwhelming number of online spaces in which people are gathering around specific illnesses, conditions and health topics. Adding them to the directory and spending time in these spaces helped re-affirm and further explore ideas I already had around the definition of an online community
There are discussions about community management and community engagement in the social media sector, but not all of these discussions relate to my evolving definition of an online community. I believe a community is not a forum, is not a social media following, and is not an audience. Through this project I have now developed a list of characteristics that I feel begin to distinguish btween health forums and groups, and fully-functioning health communities, and these definitions will help me further define my ideas around the definition of online communities in general. Putting together the directory also alerted me to a growing number of networks being built to unite online health communities under a single umbrella platform, some of which the NHS are signposting. A question remains whether this is an attempt by ‘experts’ to regain control of those conversations and decentralised spaces.
Though there may be benefits of reliable and trustworthy spaces for health communities to sit, I remain uncertain about whether this a positive move. Regarding the initial purpose of the directory to help explore the categories around which groups are forming, it is currently suggesting a trend for spaces to be created around long-term conditions, or conditions and situations that have a long-term impact on lifestyle. The time I have spent in these spaces would also lead me to suggest that identity plays a role in this. This makes me wonder if online communities can be used to effectively to engage people around short term problems or public health issues which don’t already impact on identity, for example, the current need for engagement with cervical screening. This is a subject which only seems to appear in communities once cell irregularities are found or a cancer has developed. I wonder if communities can be used for prevention rather than solutions, which isn’t something I’ve seen much of so far. Questions also arise about how you engage an individual in a community whose lifestyle isn’t already affected by a condition or specific situation. Ultimately this project aimed to find a space to set up a new online community to explore further questions around their potential impact in the health sector. I will now continue to work with members of the Health Sciences and Wellbeing Faculty to develop this based on what I’ve discovered so far, and hope to use this project as a springboard to examine further research opportunities.