Social Media Enabled Rehabilitation Services: Influence of Covid-19 Metaphors

Abstract

This study analyses the social media discussions on disability during the Covid-19 in the Southern part of India. The purpose is to assess the e-participants’ attitude toward disability problems during their social media participation. Participant observation and focus group discussions with citizens often post in social media disability groups. Existing studies less reported the social media disability discussions in regional language, even though it is vital to explore justice at the grassroots level of disability inclusion. The current findings show that citizens’ ill-conceived understanding of disability challenges during the covid-19 results in an unsupportive social media environment. The extreme and exploitation expressions in regional language groups show the lack of local support from the common public for the disabled during the pandemic. The lack of non-institutional voluntary metaphors emphasizes the need to improve the disability support structures at the regional level. Recommendations to enhance e-participation competency are provided. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.