Whose Advice is Credible? Claiming Lay Expertise in a Covid-19 Online Community

Au, Larry; Eyal, Gil

doi:10.1007/s11133-021-09492-1

Cited by 19 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…First, as an emerging and, to a degree, contested diagnosis, the uncertainty surrounding orthorexia demands explicit and ongoing work to assert its substance, boundaries, and legitimacy, as they cannot be taken for granted (Dumit 2006 ). Second, understanding how and why this diagnosis—and the knowledges coalescing around it—have been taken up and put to use in a non-clinical setting offers insight into the complex relationships between lay and medical knowledges—something that transcends the case of orthorexia, as the current pandemic has made clear (e.g., Au and Eyal 2022 ). And lastly, this case sheds light on the key role digital media can play in enabling and shaping medicalized identities and socialities while also demanding innovative research methods that are attentive to the particularities of such research sites.…”

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confidence: 99%

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Arguedas

2022

Qual Sociol

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Diagnoses are powerful tools that fulfill various practical and symbolic functions. In this paper, I examine how a contested diagnosis called orthorexia nervosa has been taken up by users on Instagram, where tens of thousands of posts engage with the topic, many of them from individuals who identify with the condition. I put scholarship on medicalization and diagnosis in conversation with literature on subcultures to foreground the subversive work that is enabled through this diagnosis. Drawing on more than 350 hours of online ethnographic fieldwork and 34 in-depth interviews, I examine how participants construct a shared identity, draw on common language and norms, and undertake collective practices, as they negotiate dominant understandings of health. I show how they draw on the legitimacy endowed by the diagnostic label to validate and make sense of experiences of suffering but also to counter dominant health-seeking discourses, practices, and aesthetics in an online space where these are highly visible and valued. I also discuss some ways Instagram as a digital platform shapes its uptake by this community in meaningful ways. On the one hand, participants draw heavily on the language and framing of medicine to make sense of their fraught experiences with food and their bodies, effectively advocating for the medicalization of their own suffering while also creating a sense of community and shared identity. However, on the other hand, they actively use the diagnosis and the recovery process enabled through it to effectively resignify dominant beliefs, values, and practices that are experienced as injurious, including some that are particularly prevalent on Instagram.

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confidence: 99%

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Arguedas

2022

Qual Sociol

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“…It is important to emphasize that we focus on experts' initial responses—the first 2–3 months of 2020—to COVID‐19, a time of uncertainty when experts were faced with many unknowns and were tasked with recognizing what type of problem COVID‐19 posed (Zinn, 2021 ). The dynamics at play at the outset of the pandemic are different from sustaining a robust response in the long term, as uncertainty subsided and what was considered a credible claim to expertise changed (Au and Eyal 2022 ). Our case selection is based on a modified most‐different case design.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“It's (Not) Like the Flu”: Expert Narratives and the COVID‐19 Pandemic in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States

Liu

2022

Sociological Forum

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We trace the crafting of expert narratives during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States. By expert narratives, we refer to how experts drew different lessons from past disease experiences in order to guide policymakers and the public amidst uncertainty. These expert narratives were mobilized in different sociopolitical contexts, resulting in varying configurations of expertise networks and allies that helped contain and mitigate COVID-19. In Mainland China, experts carefully advanced a managed narrative, emphasizing the new pandemic akin to the 2003 SARS outbreak can be managed while destressing the similar mistakes the government made during the two crises. In Hong Kong, experts invoked a distrust narrative, pointing to a potential coverup of COVID-19 similar to SARS, activating allies in civil society to pressure policymakers to act. In the United States, experts were mired in a contested narrative and COVID-19 was compared to different diseases; varying interpretations of COVID-19's consequences were exacerbated by political polarization. In expert narratives, the resonance of the past is emergent: the past becomes a site of struggle and a cultural object that is presented as potentially useful in solving problems of the present.

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“…The basis of modelling also provoked public debate on epidemiological projections’ parameters, specifications and accuracy (see also, Au et al, 2022). Furthermore, stay-at-home orders led to the flattening of the curve, and the decrease in case counts complicated public expectations.…”

Section: The United States: ‘Flatten the Curve’ And Individual Choice...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These imaginaries resonate differently with the public depending on its framing while diagnosing what is wrong and providing solutions to these problems (Benford & Snow, 2000). At a time of radical uncertainty, as was the case during the initial months of the pandemic, credible claims to expertise were somewhat uncoupled from credentialed forms of expertise (Au & Eyal, 2022). It is thus possible to speak of dominant sociotechnical imaginaries backed by the state and subversive sociotechnical imaginaries backed by social actors aimed at disrupting state-backed health interventions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Blind Spots of Sociotechnical Imaginaries: COVID-19 Scepticism in Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States

Silva

2022

Science, Technology and Society

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During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, experts and policymakers mobilised various slogans to compel the public to help defeat COVID-19. By comparing Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, this study shows how dominant sociotechnical imaginaries tied to the slogans were mobilised. We argue that the blind spots of these dominant sociotechnical imaginaries contributed to subversive sociotechnical imaginaries and made room for COVID-19 scepticism. In Brazil, calls to ‘take care of yourself’ contributed to a sceptical stance that individualised responsibility. In the United Kingdom, calls to ‘protect the NHS’ contributed to sceptical accusations of whataboutism and the neglect of other vital social institutions during the lockdown. In the United States, calls to ‘flatten the curve’ contributed to scepticism that challenged public health interventions through discourses of individual choice and freedom. By paying attention to the blind spots of dominant sociotechnical imaginaries, we argue that experts and policymakers should be sensitive to how public health messaging may have feedback effects that detract from the initial aims of interventions.

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Whose Advice is Credible? Claiming Lay Expertise in a Covid-19 Online Community

Cited by 19 publications

References 48 publications

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

“It's (Not) Like the Flu”: Expert Narratives and the COVID‐19 Pandemic in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States

The Blind Spots of Sociotechnical Imaginaries: COVID-19 Scepticism in Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States

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