Everyday health and the internet: a mediated health perspective on health information seeking.

This paper explores the relationship between internet use and individuals' health experience. Adopting a 'mediated health' approach, it presents four cases studies of households using the internet for health information. The study shows that participants use the internet as it offers personalized information in line with individuals' and families' health needs affecting their everyday routines. The internet emerges as an everyday helper linked to the intimacy of health experiences. Agency is manifest in study participants' choice of both becoming more informed as well as having the possibility of ignoring information. Case studies also show how personal internet use is confronted by informational surroundings generating flows of information that may induce uncertainty on the information seeker's side. The paper calls for a perspective which considers together personal health experience and media use to embed online health information seeking within an everyday context of internet use.