Abstract:
The study focuses on the response of online communities to campaigns posted on social media
to aware the people regarding health care. The purpose of this study was to explore the view
point of online communities on the information available at social media networks to make
people aware about the symptoms and dangers of diseases along with the preventive measures.
Moreover the study endeavors to look into the attitude of online communities towards the
prevention of those diseases as result of the awareness they receive through e-campaigns on
social media. The study explores as to what kind of diseases or health issues are mostly
discussed on the social media networks. Data was mainly collected through digital
observations on facebook. Moreover in-depth interviews were conducted from social media
users. Some of the interviews were conducted with the representatives of the organizations or
departments who (ever) campaigned on social media on health related issues to know their
experience with the online communities. The communities were approached through the
groups and pages having information related to health care awareness or information about
different diseases. The posts of these groups or pages were visited and the comments of page
visitors were reviewed by the researcher. The comments were further divided into two parts (i)
positive perceptions, and (ii) negative perceptions. Data was interpreted in Michel Foucault's
theoretical perspective on Power/Knowledge. This study will serve as first digital ethnography
of health related social media campaigns in the field of anthropology and aims to open new
horizons for future researches in the field of digital anthropology and medical anthropology.
