Dr Hannah Ditchfield

Hannah joined Loughborough University in 2026 as a Research Associate on NeGen-SOS (New Genetics, Same Old Surgeries?), an ESRC-funded project (2026-2029) focused on digital narratives, clinical practices and lived experiences of gynaecological cancer prevention. 

Prior to this, she worked at the University of Sheffield as a Research Associate on Previvorship in the Platform Society (The Leverhulme Trust, 2022-2025), Living With Data (The Nuffield Foundation, 2020-2022) and as a University Teacher in Digital Media and Society (2018-2020).  

Hannah has been awarded a BSc in Communication and Media (2012, First Class) and MA in Media and Cultural Analysis (2013, Distinction) from Loughborough University. She has a PhD in Media and Communication from the University of Leicester (2018).  

Hannah is scholar of digital media and communication. She is particularly interested in platform structures and affordances and how these shape and intersect with our identities, interactions and the visibilities we see (and don’t see) online.  

Her recent research has focused on the lived experiences and representations of health and illness across social media platforms. She is particularly concerned with issues of content moderation in the women’s health space online and sits on CensHERship’s ‘Women's Health Visibility Alliance’ to work towards unbiased social media access and representation for women's health content. 

Hannah worked as a Research Associate on Previvorship in the Platform Society with Professor Stefania Vicari, exploring how hereditary cancer is represented on and experienced through mainstream social media. She has published with Vicari on how hereditary cancer content creators construct self and sociality in short video content and the different visibilities of hereditary cancer across social media platforms.  

Her past research has focused on lived experiences and perceptions of digital technologies such as public sector data uses (Living With Data project, with Professor Helen Kennedy). Her PhD (University of Leicester, 2018) examined how people use the affordances of social media platforms to present the self in their everyday interactions. This work drew on microanalytic methods (conversation analysis) and interactionist theory (Goffman) to argue for the importance of studying the ‘rehearsal stage’ of identity management.  

Hannah is currently furthering her research interests in digital representations and lived experiences of women’s health through her work on NeGen-SOS (New Genetics, Same Old Surgeries?), an ESRC-funded project (2026-2029) focused on gynaecological cancer prevention led by Professor Stefania Vicari.  

• Ditchfield H & Vicari S (2025) Identity roles and sociality on TikTok: Performance in hereditary cancer content (#BRCA and #Lynchsyndrome). Social Media + Society, 11(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251340862. 
• Vicari S, Ditchfield H & Chuang Y (2025) Contemporary visualities of ill health: On the social (media) construction of disease regimes. Sociology of Health and Illness, 47(1), https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13846. 
• Vicari S & Ditchfield H (2025) Platform visibility and the making of an issue: Vernaculars of hereditary cancer on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. New Media & Society, 27(6), https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241229048. 
• Kennedy H, Ditchfield H, Oman S, Bates J, Medina Perea I, Fratczak M & Taylor M (2024) How people connect fairness and equity when they talk about data uses. Big Data and Society, 11(4), https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241303162 
• Ditchfield H, Oman S, Kennedy H, Fratczak M, Bates J, Taylor M & Medina Perea I (2024) What ifs: The role of imagining in people’s reflections of data uses. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 30(6), 2025-2041, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241300898 
• Ditchfield, H (2023) Spinning interactional plates: Managing multicommunication behind the screen of Facebook. Discourse & Communication, 17(4), 397-414, https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813231156749  
• Ditchfield H (2021) Ethical challenges in collecting and analysing online interactions. In Meredith J, Giles D & Stommel W (Ed.), Analysing Digital Interaction, Palgrave Macmillan. 
• Ditchfield H (2020) Behind the screen of Facebook: Identity construction in the rehearsal stage of online interaction. New Media & Society, 22(6), 927-943, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819873644