MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Health communication scholarship provides critical insight into what we, as citizens, discuss and debate as being important to our collective well-being and what health means to us as a society. While we know that promoting health as popular culture has “Gone Hollywood,” the discussion of health issues has also moved to the Internet. In an online environment where participatory culture dominates, health has been elevated to a cultural commodity where people share similar interests and goals by exchanging ideas, building awareness, educating others and raising funds. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which the organization describes as “the world’s largest global social media phenomenon,” is probably one of the most well-known examples of a health topic going viral; it is reported that 17 million people uploaded their own videos that were watched by 440 million people 10 billion times, in addition to raising $115 million for the ALS Association during the first year of the campaign. Similar examples of health as pop culture can also be found on the Web: from social media campaigns aimed at fighting breast cancer (e.g., #BCAstrength) to providing support for mental health (The Semicolon Project) to educating about intellectual disabilities (The R-Word - Spread the Word to End the Word) to raising awareness of men’s health issues (Movember). This presentation explores how the Internet has provided a public space where people can actively participate in important topics about health, and how promoting health as popular culture has gone viral.