cyber(bio)sociality and identity

In “Online and offline relationships”, authors challenge the concern about the so called dichotomy between online and offline relationships which assume that the digital mediation would lead to less authentic relationships. Using concepts like frames and groups, the chapter argues the complexity in evaluating relationships that involve with digital mediation. Instead of emphasizing the difference between online and offline relationships, it articulates the evaluation of relationships that plays crucial role in framing interaction in both online and offline. This chapter discusses offline relationships in a broad sense, referring to social media including Whatsup and Facebook, the next two readings, however, investigate into a specific category of online relationship embedded in a particular biomedical setting.

“Treat us right” deals with a type of cyberbiosociality that patients be made subjects of statics through online platforms where the internet mediation transforms patients’ view of body and sense of belonging. In the introduction and three chapters, Biomedical Odyssey illustrates various cybersociality that only exist in different online platforms and results from dynamics of illness and sufferings, some of which involve with global seek of cure. Chapters pay attention to issues like: the display and organization of online platforms like CareCure that create virtual space and allow asynchronic sociality that enable users to meet and develop a specific  identity despite their physical disabilities;  embodied experience of illness and suffering that frame particular experience of cybersociality in terms of cure-seeking; and how internet plays a role in the viscera world to deal with cross-cultural experience.  

When we compare the cybersociality in professional platforms like CareCure in terms of its agenda and content, with the cybersociality in social media sites that include both online and offline relationships,  or comparing CureCare with a forum on photography or painting, to what extent they are similar or distinct? How does a user frame his or her identity on different platforms where produces various cybersociality, a stranger, a real person, a person with a hobby, or a patient? As the book suggests, the online experience or performances are framed by dynamics of illness, does the physical experience impact self-identity on different forums? I am a real person who happens to be sick, or I am a patient with cancer, or i am paralyzed. Different self-categorization lead to different evolution of online sociality and determines the online performance.