Qualitative Health Communication

Call for papers

Special Issue: Digital Health Communication

This special issue of Qualitative Health Communication is dedicated to exploring the health communication landscape of the digital era. Advances in digital technology have revolutionized the healthcare sector and has allowed for new forms of communication. We see how traditional types of health-related mass communication such as health campaigns move onto social media, providing new means of interaction with citizens in addition to traditional monologic, one-way communication from authorities. Similarly, we see authorities taking on digital media when needed to reach citizens with crisis communication messages, as during the pandemic. Interpersonal communication is impacted by new digital technology. In the primary and secondary health care sectors, technological development has led to the introduction of telemedicine systems enabling digital communication between patients and healthcare professionals, both synchronously, as in video consultations, and asynchronously, e.g. via e-mail consultations or chat functions in apps. Another example is the electronic health record, which was traditionally exclusively doctor-to-doctor communication, but which in many countries, has been made accessible to patients, making it a new form of doctor-patient communication. Outside the established healthcare system, the internet has also provided opportunities for new health communication meetings, such as when patients find each other and form communities in online forums or on social media. In addition, we now see hospitals and general practitioners engaging in types of external communication that have previously primarily been reserved for companies, such as Facebook and Instagram posts. Besides interpersonal communication, we can point to the many forms of human-machine communication taking place in the contemporary digital health landscape, both within and outside of the established healthcare system. Human-machine communication in digital health can include aspects of datafication for instance the patient’s embodied experience, voluntary or pushed modes of self-tracking as well as the use and interpretation of data visualizations.

We welcome articles that deal with one or some of the above topics as well as other topics related to digital health communication. Articles must have a strong qualitative focus.