Attendees: Kristin Barker, University of New Mexico, USA
It is increasingly the case that concerned and informed laypeople encroach on terrain seen as the jurisdiction of scientific experts. Because scientific and lay knowledge emerge within different social contexts and reflect different epistemological principles, they often diverge – sometimes leading laypeople to challenge scientific authority over issues that directly impact their well-being and that of their communities. Although sociologists of science and other science scholars have examined how expertise concerning scientific matters can be acquired by laypeople acting within local communities, they have not systematically examined how Internet communities create new opportunities for the development of such expertise. This is particularly commonplace in medicine, where online illness forums are popular sites for the production of lay knowledge concerning medical matters. In this lecture I put forward a theoretical framework for understanding the production and consequences of online patient-generated knowledge. Specifically, I explicate three interrelated forms of connectivity as core features of patient-generated expertise in the Internet Age.