Communicating Diabetes: A Roundtable Discussion of the Social Construction of a Disease

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Abstract

This interactive roundtable discussion prompts us to interrogate how our language shapes the reality of diabetes as lived within various cultural contexts. We propose this forum as a means through which communication scholars can wrestle with social constructionism, while discovering shared and differing meanings of diabetes, which are reinforced or changed through communicative interactions. Using different populations, the scholars outline select epistemological and theoretical approaches to understanding the communicative construction of diabetes.

Sub Unit

• Communication as Social Construction Division

Chair

• Mumba Mumba, Ohio University

Presenters

• Lynn Harter, Ohio University

• Kallia Odette Wright, Illinois College

• Alan Hansen, Carroll College

Respondent

• Carolyn Shue, Ball State University

Session Organizer

• Kallia Odette Wright, Illinois College