This document summarizes research on social media use related to eczema. It discusses how YouTube videos about eczema attract millions of views and how comments on these videos discuss themes of self-esteem, allergies/diet, medical treatments, and alternative medicines. The videos and comments reflect how people seek support and manage their health conditions online in a very social and networked manner. This challenges traditional health information sources and represents the rise of patient-created online health information.

1. Social media and health:
YouTube and eczema’
Presentation at the School of Applied
Social Science at the University of
Brighton, University of Brighton
Michael Hardey
HYMS* and SATSU**
*Hull/York Medical School **Science and Technology Studies Unit

2. 1990s Web1.0 After 2005 Web2.0
2000s
One-way Social-way
Social Network Sites
(SNSs)
Email
Mash-ups
READ-only web pages
Social Bookmarking
Static websites
Pod & Webcasts
Discussion forums
Collaboration
IM
User-generated
Chat rooms
content

4. Social media use
Morgan Stanley Internet Trends Report 2010

5. You Tube
• Now owned by Google about 35 hours of videos are
uploaded every minute - over 3 billion videos are
viewed a day
• 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Nearly 17 million people have connected their YouTube
account to at least one social network site
• Nearly 2 million viewers have seen a video about
eczema - another concerned with diabetes has an
audience of over 1.5 million.
• YouTube seen as key to Google’s income generation –
format changes and increased commercial content

6. Methods
• Search terms eczema and my eczema.
• 6,590 results.
• YouTube provides up to 1,000 video clips per
search.
• By default search outcomes are sorted by
relevance.
• First 260 corresponded best to the search term.
• 105 videos - the first 10 that were presented as
‘most relevant’ – created by 5 men and 5 women.
• Attached to these 800 comments.

7. • In all but one video the authors videos looked at
the camera directly at the viewer for most of the
time. In most cases the camera closely framed
the authors, displaying mainly their faces and
shoulders. In three videos close-ups of the signs
of eczema of the skin were displayed.
• There is an interplay between authors and their
audience that is acted out through the comments
associated with specific YouTube videos.
• In effect the videos act as prompt or platform for
audience participation.

8. Methods - Comments
• The comments were screened to remove, those with less than
5 words (for example, ‘respect you man’ or ‘LOL’), those that
were tagged ‘content removed’ (YouTube terms of use promise
to delete offensive content) and the advertising of products.
• A further screening was undertaken to identity spam and
duplicate comments. Methods
• Final total of 423 comments.
• A qualitative ‘constant comparative method’ of analysis that
involved reading and re-reading the material to generation
analytically based categories. The themes and concepts that
emerged from the analysis were repeatedly compared with the
data to ensure their validity.

9. Analysis of the comments - 4
interconnected themes
• Self-esteem
• Allergies and diet
• Medical treatment
• Complementary and
Alterative Medicine
The following extracts are for
Illustration and have been
anonymised in this version of the presentation

10. Self-esteem
I’m a big man and big into sports but my eczema can be
real bad if I don’t treat it like a girl. Its great to see a guy
with a vid on here. I had more skin products than my last
GF (girlfriend) LOL!!! What I hate about it is that I’m a
mans man but have a girls skin. Thanks for the info and
big up you guys who are sharing out there. It gets better
if you take care. [Audience M/UK/V9]
I’m scared to have sex because of what my boyfriend may
say. I feel a little better seeing your little dark scars are
like mine. Can you tell me what your boyfriend thinks?
[Audience F/?/V1]

11. Allergies and diet
IM SO SORRY that you have eczema! i think you are right
about the digestive system. i hear it is really good to not eat
red foods! hope you will feel better soon! do you treat it?
[Author F/UK/V5]
Thanks so much for your video. I never thought of allergies
before! I'm actually a lot better now! Been exercising and
trying to eat right and limit allergy prone foods like dairy,
chocolate, gluten, caffeine, alcohol.... it kind of sucks but I've
been just moderating now that I'm better. Health is key! I
didn't use cremes or anything. Been avoiding soap and
makeup on my face, I only use some light lotion now. Hope
you are doing well. :-) [F/UK/V5]

12. Medical treatment
My family physician known me since I was a kid and she
still treats me the same. Gives me the creams and things
and away I go. That's OK but I don’t do that toxic med
stuff any more and like you show (in the related video)
there are better ways to go. I’ve been using coconut oil
like you showed and it is working. I can see you are like
me so I know you have good advice. [Audience F/US/V8
I’ve tried the cortizone and all that crap but I think it thins
out your skin. But yeah the one I use is called
Quadriderm. I usually get it from Mexico since its illegal in
the U.S now. [Audience M/US/V6]

13. Complementary and Alterative Medicine
Hi, just wanted to say I have been following you since your
first video and my eczema have come from being bizarre to all
the way clear. I just want to thank you because if I went to the
doctor and kept taking those prescription medicines, my
eczema probably would of got worse. I'm back to my normal
skin tone and everything, after having discoloration, using
Mederma ☺ like you said in your video and Rosemary. We
made it and finally won so now I can say to the doctors Haha!
All natural baby! lol [Audience F/AUS/V4]
If you watched my other vids, I mentioned putting steroids on
my face for years. It eventually started to turn the whites my
eyes yellow. [Author M/US/V4]

14. About bodies
The videos reflect ‘dysappearance’
- ‘In experiential terms, one
becomes aware of the recalcitrant
body as separate from and
opposed to the ‘I’’ (Leder, D. (1990) The
Absent Body, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press:88).
The videos show how people seek
to manage and come to terms with
the mundane realities of the
recalcitrant body

15. On social media all my friends know
I’m a dog…
Many members have their
activities anchored to their
profile on a social
networking site like
Facebook and push changes
across their social networks.
Videos are also revealing of
identity
In other words - we have
been looking at how people
connect with others and
consume/produce rather
than any technology per se.

16. Being ‘real’
A network embeddedness that means that those who
access information often know the authors of videos and
comments.
There is therefore:
A social context for judgments about the veracity or
utility of information.
A ‘grammar of conduct’ (cf. Wood and Skeggs (2004) ‘Notes
on Ethical Scenarios of Self on British Reality TV’, Feminist Media
Studies 4(1): 205–208)
More broadly the videos and comments reflects an
‘aestheticisation of everyday life’ and the ‘archive
cultures’ (Featherstone, M. (2000) ‘Archiving Cultures’, BJS 51(1):
161–84

17. The new prosumers of ehealth?
• Always networked, take
delight in organising and
redistributing information
(so that search engines are
less significant), have a
reconfigured sense of the
private and public.
• A challenge to professional
sources of information or
the authorised health
discourse e.g.
healthtalekonline, NHSChioc
es…

18. Conclusion
Social media patient created information is shaping health
behaviour.
Social media users not just Generation Y.
We need to recognise that how it is created and used is ways
that are different from established work on online forums
and other Web 1.0 spaces.
We need to understand how organisations and state agencies
use social media.
We need to revisit debates about the risk and impact.
We need to devise new or adapt old methodologies and
theories to researching social media information and
relationships – also consider ethics.
Finally, my thanks for the stimulating comments from
members of SASS @ Brighton