Cuadernos de Antropología Social (Sep 2017)
Informed, Hopeful, Hesitant: A virtual ethnography of the participation of women with reproductive difficulties in an Argentine egg donation forum
Abstract
The article presents preliminary findings from analysis of an online forum on egg donation hosted by one of Argentina’s most well-known maternity websites, Planeta Mamá. It explores prevalent themes and ways of using the forum, showing the emergence of three characteristic female online profiles that are routinely enacted online: the information-leaned, the hopeful, and the doubtful woman. Analysis of these online profiles enables questioning the extent to which information sharing can truly become, in the context of online activity, a form of empowerment; in addition it points to the need of further considering the online forum as space where a specific type of peer pressure takes place. The nature/culture dichotomy is also analysed as part of these repertoires, specifically in its capacity to emphasise the “construed” character of kinship. Through these analyses, the article makes a contribution towards an empirical specification of Rose and Novas’s (2005) notion of “digital bio-citizenship”.
