Youth media consumption and disordered eating practices have historically been subjects of moral panics, often resulting in protective, deficit-based interventions like content removal. We argue for interventions which instead equip youth to evaluate and manage risks in their online environments, building upon their existing “information sensibility” practices. Drawing upon ethnographic research and intervention testing with 77 participants in the US and India, we analyze how youth (aged 13–26), including those with diverse political perspectives and those recovering from disordered eating (DE), engage with online news and health information. Participants generally algorithmically encountered (rather than searched for) information online, and their engagement was shaped more by social motivations—like belonging—than truth seeking. Participants interpreted online information collaboratively, relying on social cues and peer validation within their online communities. They demonstrated preference for personal testimonies and relatable sources, particularly those with similar social identities. We propose resilience-building interventions that build upon these youth online information practices by: (1) leveraging peer networks, promoting critical information engagement through collaborative learning and peer-to-peer support within online communities; (2) developing social media sensibility, equipping youth to critically evaluate information sources in situ; (3) providing pathways offline, connecting youth to desired in-person communities; and (4) encouraging probabilistic thinking.

In an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863, Oliver Wendell Holmes argues that advances in the manufacturing of prostheses should inspire optimism about national life after the Civil War. An artificial limb in motion, he notes, can no longer be distinguished from the human leg. What was once clanking evidence of injury or lack now promises to speed the work of individual and collective recovery. Initially, Holmes's enthusiasm for the Palmer leg seems meant to reassure an anxious public and to comfort readers whose wounded loved ones would soon be returning from the battlefields [End Page 431] by the thousands. And yet his confident analogy pivots even more emphatically on the prospect of black emancipation. Giving poetic license free reign, Holmes goes on to describe legs as the "slaves in the republic of the body" and prostheses as the "Garrison of these oppressed members."¹ Shifting from melancholic consolation to jubilant declaration, he equates freedom with rehabilitation into mobility and imagines a future in which race is no longer a barrier to progress. Like disability, Holmes suggests, race can be overcome.

Introduction Existing qualitative research on early-stage Parkinson’s disease draws on patients’ reported disease experience, aiming to capture the symptoms and impacts most relevant to patients living with the disease. As a complement to this research, the present study investigated the patient experience of early-stage Parkinson’s disease from a holistic, ethnographic perspective. We explored the attitudes, beliefs, and social structures that shape how people understand and adapt to life with early-stage Parkinson’s disease. Methods Researchers interviewed 30 people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease, 10 relatives, and 10 neurologists and movement disorder specialists in the USA and Germany. Many of these interviews took place in-person, allowing researchers to spend time in participants’ homes and witness their daily lives. A multidisciplinary team of social scientists, clinical researchers, and patient organization representatives led the mixed-methods study design and analysis. In-depth ethnographic interviews yielded qualitative insights, with a quantitative survey following to assess their prevalence in a larger sample of 150 patients. Results In addition to developing a patient life experience pathway of early-stage Parkinson’s disease, we identified five key thematic findings that provide insight into how the clinical features of the disease become meaningful to patients on the context of their daily lives, family relations, and subjective well-being: (1) People with early-stage Parkinson’s disease start coming to terms with their disease before receiving a medical diagnosis; (2) Acceptance is not a finalized achievement, but a cyclical process; (3) People with early-stage Parkinson’s disease “live in the moment” to make the future more manageable; (4) Slowing disease progression is an important goal driving the actions of people with early-stage Parkinson’s; and (5) People with early-stage Parkinson’s disease value information that is grounded in lived experience and relevant to their stage of disease progression. Conclusion This holistic, ethnographic approach to patient life experience provided five key thematic findings that complement insights from qualitative and quantitative datasets on early-stage Parkinson’s disease. An enhanced understanding of how early-stage Parkinson’s symptoms impact patients’ health-related quality of life and their broader social lives can help us better understand how patients make decisions about their usage of healthcare services and therapies.

American Literature in Transition, 1851–1877 - June 2022