The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer: Patient-to-Patient Discourse in an Online Community

by Carie S. Tucker King

Overview

More and more women are searching the Internet for medical information. Women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer search for information and participate in online communities—groups that “gather” in established online spaces to interact about their diagnoses of breast cancer. They share their own struggles and emotions with their own language: the rhetoric of breast cancer. They ask questions, share experiences, create friendships, discuss their disease processes, and present their illness narratives. However, they also create ethical dilemmas for online researchers and privacy issues as they share information that is legally protected through HIPAA.
Online communities will only increase as research of online information expands through big data and predictive analytics, and more than ever before, women need to be aware of the information they share. Researchers also need to be aware, as they share the data they gather, and seek to preserve the privacy of the creators of the online data that they investigate and report.
The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer provides a discussion of the complex structures of online communities, particularly those focused on medical diagnoses, and is a valuable read for patients, theorists, physicians, and researchers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498552455
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	09/22/2017
Series:	Lexington Studies in Health Communication
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	190
File size:	901 KB

About the Author

Carie S. Tucker King is clinical professor of communication and associate director of rhetoric at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Online Communities and Patient Discourse
Chapter Two: The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer
Chapter Three: Patients, Medical Care, and Rhetoric
Chapter Four: Concerns Related to Privacy, Online Disclosure, and Ethics
Chapter Five: Big Data and the Rhetorics of Health and Medicine
References
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

In The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer: Patient-to-Patient Discourse, King painstakingly presents a deeply impressive snapshot of women's breast cancer discourse. Her work is methodical and textured, revealing the rhetoric surrounding breast cancer between patients in one online space. Ethically scrupulous, other researchers in the rhetoric of health and medicine (and researchers, in general), will benefit from King's meticulous discussion of research ethics in digital spaces. As researchers endeavor to understand patient-to-patient discourse in online spaces and analysts mine the Internet's data to predict trends, behavior, and outcomes, King's work includes especially salient, timely discussions.

Kristin Bivens

King is a powerful voice for the patient-side of medicine. She provides thought-provoking and timely information about the unintended consequences of sharing medical information in online communities and brings to light the potential harm to patients in the age of big data.

Brenda Sims

The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer: Patient-to-Patient Discourse in an Online Community is a deeply moving account of the language, symbols, and digital texts that breast cancer patients use to share information and support each other in an online community. Although the book’s specific focus is online patient communication in a specific patient forum devoted to breast cancer, this book’s findings about patient-to-patient communication will be of interest to anyone who is, has been, or knows a patient diagnosed with a serious condition. King’s writing is compelling, and the book is extremely well researched. She has managed to achieve scholarly rigor in a text that will reach a wide audience because its prose is so compelling. It is the rare scholarly text that can meet both of these standards, but King has definitely achieved this.

Amy Koerber

The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer: Patient-to-Patient Discourse in an Online Community offers a compelling case for ’s argument that “patient voices matter.” In her case study of an online breast cancer patient community, King draws out the often overlooked rhetorical strategies patients use when communicating with each other. In doing so, she expertly weaves together a narrative of the rhetoric of breast cancer as a generative language of interaction. The Rhetoric of Breast Cancer is a thought-provoking and engaging read for anyone interested in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the language of breast cancer, and the ethics of doing such online research.

Lora Arduser