Chronic illness publics: Identifying two types of peer-patienthood on Facebook and Instagram

Chronic conditions are often described as long-term bodily disorders that lead to functional limitations and the need for ongoing medical and social care. This steers some people with such disorders towards supportive interactions with peers on social media. Through a theoretical framework focused on different types of ‘publics’, the article investigates the communication of illness and patienthood in two selected social media publics, by asking: How is chronic illness and the role of the ‘peer-patient’ constructed in these different media publics? The analysis is based on empirical material dealing with two different and large Danish publics for people with chronic conditions, one on Instagram and one on Facebook, consisting of a manual coding of ‘posts’ in the two publics and interviews with 21 members/followers. The article argues that the two social media publics enable very different ways of making sense of illness, integrating illness into daily and public life, and creating bonds between peers. The article thus identifies two types of chronic publics and ‘peer-patienthood’ – the ‘activist peer-patient’ and the ‘supportive peer-patient’. Through this analysis, the article contributes to existing research by focussing on the nuances of how experiences of chronic illness can be communicated through and shaped by social media publics in fundamentally different ways.