The use of metaphor as a way to (self)understand and (re)define oneself in relation to a medical diagnosis.
Agoraphobic identities in virtual Facebook care communities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/tfst0032Keywords:
Facebook, illness, metaphor, identity, agencyAbstract
In a context like the current one, in which Information and Communication Technologies permeate the lay sphere of health and illness, grieving narratives are finding more and more spaces to be heard. One of these listening spaces is provided by virtual care communities, a fundamental tool in managing discomfort for many sick groups. From here, this article analyses the entries produced in three groups on the social network Facebook created and used by agoraphobic people, the vast majority of whom have a medical diagnosis, with the aim of studying the way in which these people construct their sick identities narratively through the use of metaphors. From this analysis it can be concluded that the use of metaphor as an individual and collective way of giving meaning to the disease functions in these spaces in two ways: as a reproductive resource of the hegemonic discourse and as an artifact of the production of one's own discourses.
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