This open access book explores how expertise about bipolar disorder is
performed on American and French digital platforms by combining insights
from STS, medical sociology and media studies. It addresses topical
questions, including: How do different stakeholders engage with online
technologies to perform expertise about bipolar disorder? How does the
use of the internet for processes of knowledge evaluation and production
allow for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder to reposition
themselves in relation to medical professionals? How do cultural markers
shape the online performance of expertise about bipolar disorder? And
what individualizing or collectivity-generating effects does the
internet have in relation to the performance of expertise? The book
constitutes a critical and nuanced intervention into dominant discourses
which approach the internet either as a quick technological fix or as a
postmodern version of Pandora's box, sowing distrust among people and
threatening unified conceptualizations and organized forms of knowledge.