L’évocation d’Internet dans l’espace du cabinet médical

When health-related Internet use and the medical consultation are compared, we can observe that these two scenes are ordered by engagements that do not necessarily coordinate with each other. Beginning with an ethnographic point of view and interviews, we aimed at questioning, within the doctor’s office, the patient-user figure whose capabilities may be strengthened by Internet use. It seems that the possibility to mention or evoke information collected online involves the implementation, by the patient, of several abilities when interacting with the physician through over- and under-communication of the patient’s uneasiness, several discursive registers replete with irony, humor, some processes of circumventions and so on. In contemporary circumstances, where the individual is requested to worry more about one’s health and to assume calls of autonomy, the necessity of these abilities is questionable. In the physician’s office, the patient-user participation forces him to behave paradoxically. This article also addresses the consequences of Internet use on the potential transformations of the patient-physician relationship