29.08.2023

About 1 in 6 couples worldwide suffer from infertility. Yet, infertility and its treatments are still considered a conversational taboo in many societies. In our article entitled “#infertility: how patients can benefit from the public discussion of conversational taboos on social media” we investigate how the open discussion of infertility-related topics on public social media platforms contributes to the well-being of individuals affected by infertility. Therefore, we used a netnographic approach to analyze 69 YouTube videos (>21 h of raw data) produced by infertility vloggers and more than 40,000 user comments. We identified two ways in which infertility patients benefit from public discussions of the topic on social media: through watching videos and engaging in discussions, patients satisfy their infertility-related needs (i.e., the need for information, emotional support and experience sharing); and through reaching people who are not affected by infertility, vloggers help to de-taboo the issue as well as sensitize and educate society.

Read the full paper here: Grothaus, J., Köcher, S., Köcher, S. and Dieterle, S. (2023), "#infertility: how patients can benefit from the public discussion of conversational taboos on social media", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 37 No. 7, pp. 944-956. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-05-2022-0160

(Ein Post von der Professur für Digitales Marketing)