“I’m still here”: an Ethnographic Exploration of Public Twitter Use among People Living with Advanced Cancer

Twitter is the most public of all social media platforms, and yet some users turn to this platform to share intimate details about their health. This ethnography explores public Twitter use among people living with advanced cancer with the aim of describing their Twitter activities and their perspectives on their use. Six latent themes were generated by analyzing 2,731 original tweets published by 8 authors and interview transcripts from 10 participants: 1) Constructing Identity Through Textual Selfie, 2) Resisting Social Death, 3) Accounting for Time, 4) Finding Freedom in Obscurity, 5) Creating a Living Legacy, and 6) Fighting for What’s Right. Through these themes, I argue that the technological affordances of Twitter can be used to counteract the inhibiting aspects of liminality. In using Twitter publicly, they declare ‘I’m still here’ to themselves, the people around them, and the world at large.M.H.Sc