WebMD and Crowdsourcing

This article was written in collaboration with Anna from The Path to Digital Digital Discovery during class on 2 November 2012.


WebMD provides a free resource for people looking for medical insight in regard to a wide variety of issues including pregnancy, chronic illnesses, nutrition, and pain management. The WebMD community includes a forum for expert insights where members can post problems and receive answers from medical experts only. There’s also a community discussion forum open to all members of the WebMD website where people can discuss similar problems and find advice from those who’ve had personal experience with those medical issues.
The objective is to provide a free resource for those looking for support and advice in regard to medical problems and prevention. For example, on the Alzheimer’s community there are numerous posts from people just looking for a friend who can relate to the problems they are facing.

This objective was and will probably continue to be accomplished. The forums are highly supported by notable medical communities and establishments. The website has built up a reputation of expertise and reliability that maintains a steady influx of members and postings. The community is empathetic and supportive, and fosters open discussion of difficult issues.

The outcome could go one of two ways: largely the community is beneficial on the social support scale. As far as diagnosis the outcome is unreliable – experts can’t run tests or meet the patients seeking advice face to face so they are essentially making guesses about diagnoses and solutions. Overall, however, WebMD is a beneficial community that utilizes collective intelligence and crowdsourcing to build a community around medical support and advice.

Terranova argued that people are essentially “NetSlaves,” and produce free labor and content in the “digital economy.” WebMD doesn’t really fit that model because the focus isn’t on the labor, it’s on the knowledge and expertise that people contribute to the community. It goes back to the articles and discussions about peer production: if you have a vested interest in the topic, then you’ll be willing to do the work and contribute to the community without compensation. This relates to ideas discussed by Yochai Benkler and Daniel Kreiss, Megan Finn, and Fred Turner. The people posting on WebMD have had experience with medical problems like cancer, psychological disorders, and sexual conditions and voluntarily offer up their personal expertise to help others going through similar issues.