An Imaginary Construct of a Feminine Disease: The Representation of HPV on Instagram by Physicians

Over the past decade, the rapid expansion of communication technologies and the pervasive penetration of social media particularly Instagram into the deepest layers of human life have profoundly transformed the established boundaries of knowledge. The field of medicine has not remained immune to the turbulences of this networked lifeworld; rather, it has adopted new modes of interacting with patients and developed novel forms of public communication and health education, especially concerning relatively unfamiliar conditions such as the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Given HPV’s intrinsic association with notions of sexual health, morality, the body, and gender, the virus occupies a distinctive position within physicians’ Instagram-based content production. Accordingly, the present study seeks to explore how HPV acquires meaning in relation to the category of “femininity,” and which discursive, ethical, cultural, and ideological mechanisms shape and stabilize this representation. To this end, employing a qualitative approach and guided by Critical Discourse Analysis, the study conducted in-depth interviews with seven physicians active on Instagram. The findings were synthesized across three analytical dimensions: description (parental and formalized linguistic registers), interpretation (pathologizing embodiment, monolithic language structures, and conceptual narrativization), and explanation (value-laden frameworks, propaganda and public-opinion engineering, and corporeal reductionism). The study ultimately reveals the intricate entanglement of power relations, gender, and digital medical knowledge underlying the feminized construction of HPV.