Project:
HEALTH KNOWLEDGE AND DIGITAL HERITAGE: EMERGING DISCURSIVE PRACTICES IN ONLINE MEDICAL COMMUNICATION
Project team:
HEALTH – KNOWLEDGE – SOCIETY GROUP
Project leader
Anna Tereszkiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Team members
Magdalena Szczyrbak (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Ramona Bongelli (University of Macerata, Italy)
Ilaria Riccioni (University of Macerata, Italy)
Alessia Bertolazzi (University of Macerata, Italy)
The project focuses on the emerging discursive practices in medical communication as influenced by new technologies and novel contexts of interaction which are gradually transforming the practices and social relations linked to health knowledge dissemination.
Since the medico-centric relationship between health providers and patients/laypersons has been undermined, medical specialists have lost exclusive access to expert knowledge while patients/laypersons have become more active, informed and knowledgeable about health issues.
In light of the above, combining insights from linguistics, communication psychology and sociology, we aim to identify new social practices involved in medical communication and health knowledge dissemination via online channels of interaction, with a special focus on social media and e-health platforms, and their effect on the discursive strategies pursued by medical experts and patients/laypersons.
Our project aims to determine what new social processes and discursive practices emerge in online medical communication and to what extent the established conventions of medical discourse are preserved or transformed into the digital medical heritage. We also seek to investigate how the notions of ‘medical expert’ and ‘medical expertise’ are being reshaped in contemporary society, as well as how the epistemic dynamics related to the new roles of a medical expert and an informed patient/layperson change. It is also our goal to identify cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences in the emerging online practices of transmitting and validating health knowledge.
Our research is grounded in pragmatics, genre analysis, textual (spoken and written) and multimodal discourse analysis as well as medical sociology. The analyses focus on the following phenomena: medical genre evolution, discursive patterns, textual and multimodal patient and expert identity creation, visual communication of medical expertise and patient identity, management of epistemic dynamics, epistemic stance negotiation, evaluation strategies (epistemic and attitudinal stance), medical knowledge dissemination, reconfiguration and recontextualisation of expert knowledge, health knowledge popularisation as well as the cultural and social response to illness.
Based on Polish-, Italian- and English-language data, we seek to identify cross-cultural and cross-linguistic similarities and differences between the emerging online practices of transmitting and validating health knowledge in three distinct socio-cultural settings.
ACTIVITIES
Conferences
15th April Conference Humanity/Humanities (20-22 April 2023, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland)
Organisation of the theme session: Health Knowledge and Online Communication
Presentations
Anna Tereszkiewicz & Magdalena Szczyrbak
Identity and knowledge construction on medical doctors’ Facebook profiles
Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni & Alessia Bertolazzi
Certainty, uncertainty and conflicting opinions about the possible adverse effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine after its first precautionary suspension: A pragmalinguistic analysis of Facebook comments on news posts in Italy
Invited guest speaker
Carolina Figueras Bates (University of Barcelona)
Doing emotions and displaying empathy: The construction of online peer support
International Pragmatics Association Conference (4-14 July 2023, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium)
Participation in the theme session: Hierarchies of Knowledge in Online Health Communities
Presentation
Anna Tereszkiewicz & Magdalena Szczyrbak
Knowledge formation and patient expertise in Polish health communities on Facebook
Poster presentation
Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni & Alessia Bertolazzi
“The benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks… they say”. An empirical study on Facebook comments on news conveying uncertainty and conflicting opinions about the possible adverse effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine
Online workshops and seminars
Upcoming online seminar on health communication, 24 April 2024
Study visits
Jagiellonian University team members’ study visit at the University of Macerata, October 2022
University of Macerata team members’ study visit at the Jagiellonian University, April 2023
University of Macerata team members’ study visit at the Jagiellonian University, September 2023
Expected project outcomes
- Internationalisation and strengthening of cooperation between Jagiellonian University and the University of Macerata
- Furtherance of our understanding of new knowledge-related social practices in the area of medical communication including the ways in which health knowledge is transmitted and preserved as ‘digital heritage’ in contemporary societies
- Analysis of emerging discursive practices in online health knowledge communication in social media and on e-health platforms from an interdisciplinary perspective
- Identification of online discursive strategies used in the process of interaction, dissemination and recontextualisation of medical knowledge in social media and on e-health platforms
- Description of epistemic dynamics related to the cognitive roles of a medical expert and an informed patient/layperson
- Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis of online health knowledge communication in Polish, Italian and English
- Introduction of Polish- and Italian-language medical communication analysis to English-language scholarship
- Building new international collaboration networks thanks to the group members’ study visits and their participation in international seminars and conferences
- Popularisation of interdisciplinary medical communication research at online and in-person events
The project is supported by the Jagiellonian University’s “Excellence Initiative – Research University” programme.