Virtually Informed - The Internet in the medical field

Over the past decades information and communication technologies (ICT) have gradually entered public and private spheres, restructuring them through new qualitative and quantitative possibilities of access to information as well as of interaction. Health and medical issues seem to be of particular interest for Web users. Thus the question rises how these new ways of rather autonomous access to medical information for non-specialist users intrudes into the traditional well anchored hierarchies of the medical system, how it reshapes the set of established relations between doctors and patients and finally in how far the credibility and power of classical medical expertise can now be/is challenged and new forms of empowerment of patients can be diagnosed. A qualitative investigation of the consequences of the availability and increasing use of the Internet as a health information source in the Austrian medical context will be the broad aim of this research project. Using the actor- network approach as theoretical frame and applying a broad range of qualitative methodologies we will analyse: - the ways in which the virtual space of medical information and communication is structured and fed with content from the providers` side (focussing on German language Web spaces, as average users tend to stay in their language context); - how users move through the virtual space seeking for information appropriate for their purposes and needs, what difficulties and barriers they meet as well as how they select, evaluate and integrate this information; - how this technology and the information it distributes intrudes into and reshapes the social relations between patients and doctors in multiple ways, but also - how policy and mass-media discourses frame these developments in the Austrian context. Of particular interest will be to analyse the role gender, education and the degree of affectedness play in using the Internet for searching medical information and for positioning themselves in the medical field. The innovative character of the project lies in the combination of different perspectives on the so-called eHealth phenomenon, which collectively allow a more fine grained qualitative understanding of the changes observed.

Over the past decades information and communication technologies (ICT) have gradually entered public and private spheres, restructuring them through new qualitative and quantitative possibilities of access to information as well as of interaction. Health and medical issues seem to be of particular interest for Web users. Thus the question rises how these new ways of rather autonomous access to medical information for non-specialist users intrudes into the traditional well anchored hierarchies of the medical system, how it reshapes the set of established relations between doctors and patients and finally in how far the credibility and power of classical medical expertise can now be/is challenged and new forms of empowerment of patients can be diagnosed. A qualitative investigation of the consequences of the availability and increasing use of the Internet as a health information source in the Austrian medical context will be the broad aim of this research project. Using the actor- network approach as theoretical frame and applying a broad range of qualitative methodologies we will analyse: the ways in which the virtual space of medical information and communication is structured and fed with content from the providers` side (focussing on German language Web spaces, as average users tend to stay in their language context); how users move through the virtual space seeking for information appropriate for their purposes and needs, what difficulties and barriers they meet as well as how they select, evaluate and integrate this information; how this technology and the information it distributes intrudes into and reshapes the social relations between patients and doctors in multiple ways, but also how policy and mass-media discourses frame these developments in the Austrian context. Of particular interest will be to analyse the role gender, education and the degree of affectedness play in using the Internet for searching medical information and for positioning themselves in the medical field. The innovative character of the project lies in the combination of different perspectives on the so-called eHealth phenomenon, which collectively allow a more fine grained qualitative understanding of the changes observed.