"Me online": Narrative identities of people with arthritis

Telling stories is a common response to illness, helping people come to terms with the experience. Increasingly, people are telling illness stories online. Existing literature focuses primarily on content analysis of stories, missing an opportunity to explore lnternet storytelling in the context of lives. In this thesis, membership categorization analysis is used to explore how people with arthritis talk about telling their story online. People describe using the lnternet in various ways and for a variety of reasons, offering a different view from studies of bounded venues such as online support groups, where it is assumed people are there for similar purposes. Despite differences, emerging in all interviews was the idea of illness as a 'project' and the importance of storytelling to that project. The lnternet is seen as a unique tool to facilitate such storytelling, offering unprecedented opportunities to connect with like-minded people worldwide.