Exacerbated Circulation

as a process of mediatization of health

Abstract

Currently, in the communication and health scenario, patients turn to digital platforms to produce content, interact, seek information and create a support community. In this context, these subjects elaborate themselves and illnesses based on different meanings produced and put into circulation. Given the above, this article aims to investigate how the communicational experiences of patients with Turner Syndrome (TS) and their families are constituted in the context of health mediatization, as well as to investigate how these configure the process of exacerbated circulation. To this end, comments from the Turner Syndrome Global Alliance Facebook page and the Butterfly TV YouTube channel were analyzed. Thus, exacerbated circulation can be understood as a process in which there is exaltation, resizing, reconfiguration and reinforcement of the senses through aspects of the subjects’ intimate lives. It is through exacerbated circulation that meanings about living with a chromosomal disorder are modified and created. In other words, exacerbated circulation allows these girls and women to elaborate themselves and create new understandings of what it is to have TS. This changes power relations, placing patients as protagonists in the process of comprehending this rare disease.