New publication on misophonia
People who suffer from misophonia (hatred of sound) come together via the Internet and fight for recognition of the diagnosis: misophonia
Misophonia is described by those affected as one of the first fully-fledged disease diagnoses of the internet age. People who feel an insurmountable hatred for specific noises gather in forums and on platforms. In this article, Cornelius Schubert and Nicole Zillien look at the emergence of the diagnosis "misophonia" as a medical category in social media. They examine how misophonia becomes a popular diagnosis, how experts and laypeople refer to each other and what resistance those involved in this process are confronted with. The authors understand the emergence of the medical category as a "making up people": as the emergence of a group of affected people who identify closely with the diagnosis and fight vigorously for recognition as a disease.
The text is published open access in the Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik and is a collaboration within the framework of the SFB Transformations of the Popular.