Facebook Feminism to contest harm: A study to understand a changing landscape of healthcare in the technological era

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The potential harms of medical implants have become the focus of increasing public concern in recent years, in part through innovative use of internet technology by affected individuals. This research project investigates the phenomenon through a case-study of women's responses to the malfunctioning female medical implant Essure. It examines intensified anxieties about potential harms associated with medical technologies. It also examines how these harms are contextualised by those affected and how agents respond in challenging corporate harms. The project uses a mixed methods approach to the women's narratives, situating this within a feminist standpoint methodology. In this way, it provides an exploration of the women's experiences of harm and subsequent online mobilisation through Facebook to challenge the medical-technology discourses they encounter. The narrative analysis is supplemented with survey data and a biographic account of an Essure-focused Facebook group. The key objectives are two-fold: first, to contribute to the study of medical technologies' relationship to health and wellbeing, and in particular to shifting perceptions of risk and harm; and second, to contribute to the study, within a growing digital society, of how and with what effects internet technology is used for health-related activism. The overall aim is to improve health provision in the technological era.