@incollection{2020:zillien:digital_ex,
title = {Digital Experiences – Patient’s Patchwork Knowledge in Health-Related Online Forums},
year = {2020},
note = {Patients undergoing infertility treatment are constantly confronted
with complex decisions requiring scientific knowledge. Referring to
scientific knowledge, which often is tentative and conflicting,
however, frequently impedes the patients’ decision-making. Against
this background, we analyse how infertility patients perceive and
utilise other patients’ knowledge which was communicated and gained
in infertility forums. A guiding premise of this article is that the
characteristics of digital media help to bring scientific knowledge to
a conclusion and, in this way, to translate it into an everyday
decision-relevant resource. In a multimethod design, we carried out
qualitative telephone interviews with 32 people with an unfulfilled
desire to have children, a standardised online survey of 1,216 users
of infertility forums as well as a standardised content analysis of
three German-language infertility forums. Our study shows that
patients’ online forums constitute a place where scientific
knowledge and lived experiences intertwine. In order to increase their
chances of a pregnancy, infertility patients using online forums
interweave scientific knowledge and personal experiences, go back and
forth in this process, and form patchwork knowledge enabling them to
go on in decisions involving uncertainty.},
booktitle = {Soziologie des Digitalen - Digitale Soziologie?},
pages = {198--209},
edition = {1},
author = {Zillien, Nicole},
publisher = {Nomos},
address = {Baden-Baden},
series = {},
volume = {}
}