This open access book explores how expertise about bipolar disorder is performed on American and French digital platforms by combining insights from STS, medical sociology and media studies. It addresses topical questions, including: How do different stakeholders engage with online technologies to perform expertise about bipolar disorder? How does the use of the internet for processes of knowledge evaluation and production allow for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder to reposition themselves in relation to medical professionals? How do cultural markers shape the online performance of expertise about bipolar disorder? And what individualizing or collectivity-generating effects does the internet have in relation to the performance of expertise? The book constitutes a critical and nuanced intervention into dominant discourses which approach the internet either as a quick technological fix or as a postmodern version of Pandora's box, sowing distrust among people and threatening unifiedconceptualizations and organized forms of knowledge.

Critically engages with dominant perspectives on expertise in the fields of social sciences and psychology Connects current debates around mental health and expertise with literature on digitally mediated patient engagement Offers a cutting-edge resource for scholars from multiple fields, including STS, medical sociology and media studies This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Autorentext

Claudia Egher is a postdoctoral researcher in the department Health, Ethics and Society at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences of Maastricht University. Her research interests include the digitalization of (mental) healthcare, the social and cultural dimensions of emerging science and technologies, and innovative participatory practices through which citizens engage in matters of shared concern in (mental) healthcare.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Studying Expertise Online.- Chapter 2: Epistemic inroads from the asylum to digital psychiatry.- Chapter 3: The drama of expertise about bipolar disorder online.- Chapter 4: Tactical Re-appraisals and Digitally Informed Hypotheses About the Treatment for Bipolar Disorder.- Chapter 5: Online Expert Mediators: Expanding Interactional Expertise.- Chapter 6: Digital Biocommunities: Solidarity and Lay Expertis About Bipolar Disorder.- Chapter 7: Expertise in the Age of Big Data.