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An Ecological Analysis of Online Medical Consumption Discourse Among Visually Impaired Individuals Using a
1Department of Consumer Science, College of Commerce and Public Affairs, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, Republic of Korea.
Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)
|May 13, 2026
Summary
Individuals who are blind or visually impaired discuss medical consumption online, focusing on personal experiences and policy barriers. This research used the Social Ecological Model (SEM) to analyze digital health discourse.
Area of Science:
- Health communication
- Digital health
- Disability studies
Background:
- Online communities are vital for discussing healthcare experiences among visually impaired individuals.
- The Social Ecological Model (SEM) provides a framework to analyze multilevel health discourse.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine medical consumption discussions in online communities of visually impaired individuals.
- To apply the Social Ecological Model (SEM) to understand digital health discourse.
- To identify themes and patterns in online health-related conversations.
Main Methods:
- Collected 428 posts/comments from Reddit's r/Blind community.
- Utilized TF-IDF for keyword extraction and LLM-based classification for SEM levels.
- Performed Jaccard similarity analysis to understand discourse associations.
Main Results:
- Intrapersonal (44.4%) and public policy (29.8%) levels dominated discussions.
- Institutional discourse (15.8%) was significant, while interpersonal (6.2%) and community (3.8%) were less prominent.
- Key themes included emotional adaptation, social support, service accessibility, mobility, and policy barriers.
Conclusions:
- Online discourse reveals a focus on personal coping and structural healthcare access issues for visually impaired individuals.
- Integrating LLM-based classification with theory-driven frameworks offers scalable analysis of health discourse.
- Understanding both individual and structural factors in digital health conversations is crucial.
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