Pain and the Internet: Transforming the Experience?

The Internet is changing the way that people are experiencing illness and is increasingly the first port of call for information as well as support and practical advice for self-management, reassurance, encouragement, to compare experiences of treatment, and to offer advice and support to others. This chapter considers how people experiencing pain use the Internet to express, share, and learn from others’ experiences. We draw on a conceptual review of the potential health effects of accessing other people’s experiences online (Ziebland and Wyke 2012). Using examples from an Oxford University archive of qualitative interview studies, we draw on the value of first person accounts, and the appeal of stories, to explore the need of people to make contact with peers and hear their accounts of pain and illness. Participating in the creation of health information, we argue, influences the way people cope with pain, and has implications for understanding the role of self-care management.