کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
5046445 1475982 2017 10 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Producing a worthy illness: Personal crowdfunding amidst financial crisis
ترجمه فارسی عنوان
تولید یک بیماری ارزشمند: جمع آوری پول شخصی در میان بحران مالی
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم پزشکی و سلامت پزشکی و دندانپزشکی سیاست های بهداشت و سلامت عمومی
چکیده انگلیسی


- Details how crowdfunding intertwines with conditions of austerity.
- Finds that crowdfunding is particularly popular in states with less access to public insurance.
- Argues that success in crowdfunding requires unique literacies.
- Shows how crowdfunding reinforces austerity by eroding claims for social protection.
- Reveals how crowdfunding has the potential to exacerbate social and health inequities.

For Americans experiencing illnesses and disabilities, crowdfunding has become a popular strategy for addressing the extraordinary costs of health care. The political, social, and health consequences of austerity--along with fallout from the 2008 financial collapse and the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)--are made evident in websites like GoFundMe. Here, patients and caregivers create campaigns to solicit donations for medical care, hoping that they will spread widely through social networks. As competition increases among campaigns, patients and their loved ones are obliged to produce compelling and sophisticated appeals. Despite the growing popularity of crowdfunding, little research has explored the usage, impacts, or consequences of the increasing reliance on it for health in the U.S. or abroad. This paper analyzes data from a mixed-methods study conducted from March-September 2016 of 200 GoFundMe campaigns, identified through randomized selection. In addition to presenting exploratory quantitative data on the characteristics and relative success of these campaigns, a more in-depth textual analysis examines how crowdfunders construct narratives about illness and financial need, and attempt to demonstrate their own deservingness. Concerns with the financial burdens of illness, combined with a high proportion of campaigns in states without ACA Medicaid expansion, underscored the importance of crowdfunding as a response to contexts of austerity. Successful crowdfunding requires that campaigners master medical and media literacies; as such, we argue that crowdfunding has the potential to deepen social and health inequities in the U.S. by promoting forms of individualized charity that rely on unequally-distributed literacies to demonstrate deservingness and worth. Crowdfunding narratives also distract from crises of healthcare funding and gaping holes in the social safety net by encouraging hyper-individualized accounts of suffering on media platforms where precarity is portrayed as the result of inadequate self-marketing, rather than the inevitable consequences of structural conditions of austerity.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Social Science & Medicine - Volume 187, August 2017, Pages 233-242
نویسندگان
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