Illness Politics and Hashtag Activism

How illness on social media reveals the struggle for care and access against ableism and stigma

Illness Politics and Hashtag Activism explores illness and disability in action on social media, analyzing several popular hashtags as examples of how illness figures in recent U.S. politics. Lisa Diedrich shows how illness- and disability-oriented hashtags serve as portals into how and why illness and disability are sites of political struggle and how illness politics is informed by, intersects with, and sometimes stands in for sexual, racial, and class politics. She argues that illness politics is central—and profoundly important—to both mainstream and radical politics, and she investigates the dynamic intersection of media and health and health-activist practices to show the ways their confluence affects our perception and understanding of illness.

Lisa Diedrich is professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Stony Brook University. She is author of Indirect Action: Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, AIDS, and the Course of Health Activism and Treatments: Language, Politics, and the Culture of Illness (both from Minnesota).

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