Like a Grinding Stone

How Crowdfunding Platforms Create, Perpetuate, and Value Health Inequities

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2289031
AutoresN Kenworthy (0000-0002-6809-5574, School of Nursing and Health Studies University of Washington Bothell, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume35
Fascículo3
Páginas327-345
Data de publicação2021-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12639
PMID33711178
OpenAlexW3133937066
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas44

This article explores how inequities are reproduced by, and valued within, the increasingly ubiquitous world of medical crowdfunding. As patients use platforms like GoFundMe to solicit donations for health care, success stories inundate social media. But most crowdfunders experience steep odds and marginal benefits. Drawing on the problematic figure of the "black box" in health disparities research and technology studies, I offer ethnography as a tool for unpacking often inscrutable and complex pathways through which online platforms amplify inequities. By leveraging both online and traditional research strategies-a platform analysis and paired narratives of crowdfunders' disparate experiences, drawn from open-ended interviews-this article explores how inequities are created and experienced by users. The analysis highlights how inequities are simultaneously central to the functioning of this marketplace and occluded by its platform design. Consequently, crowdfunding is concealing health inequities while shifting public values about who is entitled to health care, and why

Ethnography · Health care · Health equity · Narrative · Odds · Political science · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Unpacking · FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance · Medicine · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Sharing Economy and Platforms