"The ICA Loop is a theoretical concept linking (I) information overload, (C) cyberchondria and the (A) attention economy together using relational evidence between the information seekers and COVID-related media.”
Taylor Passios, media production major
The theory is designed to provide comfort to people while helping them recognize their patterns.
The living room was hot, dark, foggy and anxiety inducing. Graffiti covered the mirrors and caution tape stretched across the room.
For media production major Taylor Passios, this nightmare was her reality––one that she created in visceral detail as part of her senior honors thesis project.
A self-proclaimed hypochondriac, Passios conducted extensive research searching for an academic theory naming the anxiety-inducing loop people experience when they Google mundane health symptoms, only to find that the results lead them to believe that they are seriously ill. Without an existing theory to work with, Passios created her own, coining it, the "ICA Loop.”
“The ICA Loop is a theoretical concept linking (I) information overload, (C) cyberchondria and the (A) attention economy together using relational evidence between the information seekers and COVID-related media,” Passios says, adding that the theory is designed to provide comfort to people while helping them recognize their patterns.
Passios has vivid memories of early-life events that spurred her own hypochondria, she says.
In one instance, she recalls, after eating something she was allergic to, her mom ran into the room saying, “Oh my God, we've got to stab you with an EpiPen.” Later in life, she was diagnosed with several different illnesses, which exacerbated her anxiety around health concerns.
“Even if I get the slightest, you know, just like a symptom that no one would think anything of, I hold onto it and I'll start panicking,” she says.