Information on diabetes in blogs: applicability of the Analysis Model of Health News Discourse

Abstract

The rise of internet brings up a debate about how communication through digital media has reconfigured the way to produce, appropriate and disseminate news and general information about health.  In that regarding, blogs have constituted a virtual space for the sharing of ideas and socialization of knowledge and information, allowing the emergence of new research problems and new objects of study in communication and public health, as well as contributing to the dissemination of information, knowledge and news on health. It was observed that the health market, adjusted to the biomedical model focused on technologies and in individual assistance, uses this path to share health narratives. The study has a qualitative, descriptive and documentary research aiming at verifying the applicability of the Discourse Analysis Model on health-related news released by blogs on technological innovation in health care for Diabetes Mellitus. The Discourse Analysis Model applied to blogs have helped to see how news were spread by different media, as well as the fear of getting Diabetes and also the hope for the cure, constitute strategies of convincing users of blogs, therefore serving the interests of the economy market in the production of health demands and needs.