1.3 million Danes live with chronic illness, and some choose to join patient-led communities on social media to seek knowledge and share their illness stories with others in the same situation.
Research suggests that participating in online communities with peers can provide chronic disease patients with knowledge and care in ways that family and friends cannot. However, there is a large gender imbalance in these online communities, which are predominantly dominated by women. In Scandinavia, we have a strong tradition of democratic participation and citizenship. A tradition that the ever-increasing digitalization of society both expands and challenges.
The focal point of the project is to shed light on this gender imbalance in digital participation by investigating why so few men choose to share their illness stories in online patient-led communities and what consequences this could potentially have from a digital citizenship and gender equality perspective.
Through individual interviews, the project seeks to uncover the following questions:
