Mediated health: sociotechnical practices of providing and using online health information

new media & society, Vol. 11(7): 1123-1142, 2009While most of the existing research about online health information focuses exclusively on either the provider or the user side of communication circuits, this article aims to integrate and discuss both sides and their mediated relation to one another. Drawing on actor-network theory, it conceptualizes the provision and use of online health information as sociotechnical. It questions concretely how website providers position their websites and information, how users browse through the web and assemble information, and interrogates the various concepts of online health information these different practices imply. Further, it asks how search engines, and Google in particular, come to play such a dominant role in the way health-related web information is provided and used. The article concludes by evaluating the implications of the findings in regard to debates about the quality of online health information and the way in which web information is distributed and acquired on a broader scale