Exploring the Role of Social Media in Chronic Care Management - A Sociomaterial Approach

This paper examines how social media can support communities of patients with chronic illness and their care givers. This study is a qualitative case study and is informed by grounded theory. Sociomateriality is adopted as a theoretical lens to understand and explain the key findings. Our findings suggest that there is a dynamic relation between the contrary roles that social media in chronic care management and this is not only attributed to the functionalities of these technologies but to the attributes of patients and their states of health. We were also able to observe how these technologies are bounded up with human activities in the ways that separating them is not possible. What we learnt from our findings is that the ways patients and carers use of social media can change their perceptions about their conditions, and influence how they understand and approach the management process.