Abstract
This research aims to introduce a new marketing system established through social media in healthcare, and how it serve as an enabler of sharing private health data and mutual surveillance among healthcare actors. Through netnographic inquiry of this system called PatientsLikeMe (PLM), I explore how PLM legitimizes the sharing of private health information in the current healthcare market where privacy dominates relations among healthcare actors. PLM is a community organization that gathers patients with diverse health problems (e.g., MS, ALS, Mood, Parkinson, HIV, organ transplant) and other healthcare actors (e.g., pharmaceuticals, caregivers, physicians/researchers). It enables healthcare actors to engage in clinical research in its platform, hence facilitating the acceleration of medical research and generation of medical knowledge by patients. Findings reveal the community (meso) mediated dynamics of surveillance in healthcare through this social media platform.