Knowledge dissemination online: the case of health information

The study analyses three websites giving information about diabetes and identifies the strategies adopted to recontextualise specialised knowledge as appropriate to a lay audience. Indeed, one of the most frequently searched topics on the Internet is healthcare information, which should enable a patient to understand more fully his illness. It is therefore fundamental for managing chronic illnesses, where the newly acquired knowledge not only has to be understood, but also acted upon in order to live with the condition. Much of the content of healthcare information on the Internet is produced and distributed one-way; the message is created and controlled in a top-down fashion from expert to layperson. However, this conventional concept of knowledge dissemination is undergoing a transformation. Patients can now take an active role not only in the management of their own illness, but also in knowledge dissemination through Web 2.0, which allows user-generated content to be uploaded in a virtual community, a blog or on social networks. The paper therefore also shows how lay knowledge is incorporated and exploited to overcome the gap between expert and layman.