This study examines how patients use narratives to evaluate their experiences of healthcare services online. The analysis draws on corpus linguistic techniques, specifically annotation, applying Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) framework to a sample of online comments about the NHS in England. Narratives are pervasive in this context, being present more than absent in the patients’ comments, but are particularly prominent in comments which evaluate care negatively. Evaluations can be accomplished through all the structural elements of the narrative, including in combination with one another. However, the presence and ordering of these elements does not seem to be influenced by the type of evaluation given (i.e. positive, negative or more neutral). As mediated social practice, the narratives are shaped by the technological affordances and social dynamics of this context, for instance in the placement of particular structural elements and the design of narratives for particular “imagined” audiences.

本研究探讨了患者如何使用叙述来评估他们的在线医疗保健服务体验。该分析利用语料库语言技术，特别是注释，应用Labov 和 Waletzky (1967)关于英国 NHS 的在线评论样本的框架。在这种情况下，叙述无处不在，在患者的评论中出现的次数多于不存在，但在对护理进行负面评价的评论中尤为突出。评估可以通过叙述的所有结构元素来完成，包括相互结合。然而，这些元素的存在和排序似乎不受给定评估类型的影响（即正面、负面或更中性）。作为中介的社会实践，叙事是由这种背景下的技术可供性和社会动态塑造的，例如在特定结构元素的放置和针对特定“想象”的观众的叙事设计中。