Dealing with Medicines Through Online Platforms and Communities

This chapter focuses on the link between social media and human health and well-being, with a peculiar interest in the communication of medicine, understood both as an object for treatment and as a commercial product. After an overview of social media and the extent to which they have changed access to the web, the way we create and disseminate content—personal or professional—and communicate with other people, the chapter analyses their contribution and use in medicine. Through observation of the trends on several social media, such as forums, blogs, and social networks, the chapter presents an analysis of the role of medicine in such environment, starting with the norms that regulate their communication and ending with the identification of platforms, channels, actors involved, modes of interaction, and registers of dialogue. Finally, the chapter proposes some reflections on how design culture can intervene in the relationship between medicines and social media, from the definition of guidelines for communication to research for improving the user experience of medicines.