Interactive health communication and the construction of the identity of the person with low vision in social media

TL;DR

This study explores how individuals with low vision construct their social identity on social media, revealing a complex, interactive process that shapes their self-conception and community recognition.

Contribution

It introduces a synthetic model of identity traits for people with low vision based on social media discourse, highlighting the interactive construction of identity.

Findings

Identified 42 identity traits grouped into 8 categories.

Discourse is interactive, involving agreement, disagreement, and humor.

Constructed identity is distinct from blindness but aligned with legal frameworks.

Abstract

With use and appropriation of digital environments by the Green Cane movement in Brazil, the informational character in health is a central discursive resource, and occurs imbued with (self) conceptions about the characteristic ways of thinking, feeling and acting of the person with low vision. This work aims at exploring the discourse of the person with low vision in the social media about their own social identity. Based on the Interactive Health Communication, videos on Youtube and Facebook and Instagram posts of the Virtual Group Stargardt, a virtual community made up of people with low vision and suffering from Stargardt's Disease, were investigated. From the selection of excerpts and their coding, 42 identity traits were identified and grouped into a synthetic model with 08 categories: (T1) we are low vision and we use the green cane; (T2) we have sensitivity to light and we wear sunglasses; (T3) we have difficulties in the day-to-day, but we use assistive strategies and technologies; (T4) we are a PcD (Person with Disability) and we have rights guaranteed by law; (T5) we seek to understand about our disease and we are the spokesperson of it; (T6) we have a visual impairment, but we are not just that; (T7) we live with conflicts and contradictions by the way we see things, and; (T8) we recognize as a community. Such traits are constructed interactively, through a construction based on moments of agreement, disagreement and good humor. The discourses are oriented in the consolidation of a proper identity, distinct from the person with blindness, but similar in the legal framework of the visually impaired person.