Motivation for the Search for Digital Health Information by a Quilombola Community

Abstract

With a qualitative inductive study operated by the method of grounded theory (GT), observing the Uses and Gratifications framework for the consumption of digital platforms, we seek in this article to present empirical findings about the reasons that contribute to the search and consumption of information digital health, by Quilombola remnants of the Bairro Porto D’Áreia community, municipality of Estância, Sergipe. Here, we describe a clipping focused on the perspective of the motivation “caring for oneself and for the other”, in which we privilege the description of the need to understand information that identifies and diagnoses symptoms, origin of diseases, therapies, and medicines, and that encourages “taken decision-making about selfcare and the health of those closest to you”. With twelve in-depth interviews carried out, we report here the experiences of this group, which survives on the fringes of structures such as basic sanitation, balanced nutrition, areas of sports, education, culture, and hospital medical care. These subjects demand health care and maintain contact with digital technologies, so it is necessary to understand how they deal with and decide on health from this source of information. In this area, here we unveil the main experiences reported, motivations based on the subjects’ respective ability to choose, since the structuring conditions of the community end up modulating their daily practices regarding health. As a result, we observed among the interviewees that the search for self-care is related to self-diagnosis, medication use, adoption of treatments and preventive care practices for the elderly and children.