Digital Storytelling: Rhetorical Purpose, Modes, and Community Across POTS-Centered Instagram Accounts

This study explores a digital community of Instagram accounts centered around participants’ experiences with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. POTS is an autonomic system disorder that primarily affects women and, due to this patient demographic, is associated with high rates of misdiagnosis and long delays between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis. In exploring why these women have formed a digital community to share their stories, this study found that these women initially sought out POTS-centered social media accounts to engage in tactical technical communication and experience community. These transferred to their own accounts, which share three rhetorical goals: helping those with POTS (including the rhetor), educating others about and advocating for POTS, and forming community. These accounts comprise a discourse community, as they share the same intended audiences, rhetorical goals, and modes of communication. These rhetors also demonstrate both explicit and tacit rhetorical knowledge through their choices of rhetorical venue and modes that support their rhetorical situation.