Healing through social media: Experiences of ethnic minority cancer patients and survivors in Hong Kong

Abstract

A sizable number of literatures have suggested that cancer patients can be empowered by social media in two ways. First, social media promotes eHealth literacy by enhancing the circulation and exchange of medical information among patients and thus enables cancer patient education (Attai et al., 2016; Braun et al., 2019). Second, it leads to social support from other patients and medical professionals and in turn accumulates one’s social capital which can be mobilized to cope with challenges aroused from cancer (Bloom et al., 2019).

This presentation provides an alternative perspective to discuss the relationship between social media, healthcare and the emotional outcomes of cancer patients/ survivors, i.e. the construction of self-image in cancer treatment and its implications. I argue that with the aid of social media such as Facebook and Instagram, the process of identity construction of cancer patients can be understood via Erving Goffman’s (1956) narratives on the presentation of self in which individuals manage their impression to others during social interaction in order to define who they are. Drawing on interviews with twenty non-Chinese cancer patients and survivors including Filipinos, Indonesians and Indians in Hong Kong during April and August 2022 through snowball sampling, I find that social media helps to shape their self-image through presenting their ideal self as a fighter/ survivor rather than a victim/ patient of cancer. Although eighteen out of twenty interviewees were young and middle-aged female (between 28 and 60) who were reluctant to be diagnosed of cancer at the very beginning, a substantial number of them felt extraordinarily proud of showing pictures of their bald head and the process of chemotherapy on social media – the topics which can be considered as taboo in their homeland, and eventually overcame their emotional distress and pain over cancer treatment.