Mediated hospitalization: the new configurations of hospitalization in the era of social media

Abstract

This study discusses the new configurations of the hospitalization process – marked, in contemporary times, by an almost complete omnipresence of personal-use technological apparatuses among patients – regarding new possibilities of socioaffective bonds enabled by the digital environment. A research study of ethnographic inspiration was carried out, with participant observation, at Instituto Nacional do Câncer José Alencar Gomes da Silva (city of Rio de Janeiro, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and in the social media during three months, involving conversational and in-depth interviews. The data point to convergent and to contradictory aspects of social media in the hospital environment – a phenomenon we call mediated hospitalization: while social media enables the enrichment and the amplification of patient support and solidarity networks, it can contribute to intensify the distancing among affective bonds and foster excessive demands for attention during the treatment.

Social media; Mediated hospitalization; Socioaffective networks; Communities; Digital ethnography