The evolution of online media has led to the emergence of novel discursive practices in health communication, enabling less hierarchical dissemination of medical knowledge and health information. The ongoing democratization of medical knowledge has resulted in greater accessibility of medical information and, consequently, a significant increase in laypersons’ health awareness and health knowledge. The new practices have, too, affected the hitherto unchallenged asymmetry between medical experts, on the one hand, and patients, on the other, contributing to the occurrence of new dialogic practices in both lay-lay and lay-expert encounters.

Against this background, we wish to bring together researchers exploring various facets of online health communication, with a particular focus on expert and lay interaction practices. Suggested areas of scholarly discussion include, but are not limited to, the following: 

·    Expert voices in online health communication

·    Lay voices in online health communication

·    Expert-lay interaction in online health communication

·    Management of epistemic dynamics in online health communication 

·    Conceptualisation of ‘medical expertise’ and ‘lay medical expertise’

·    Health knowledge formation and dissemination in online contexts

·    (Un)certainty of medical knowledge 

·    Textual and multimodal identity creation in online health communication  

·    Cross-linguistic differences in online lay and expert health communication practices  

Diverse research perspectives are welcome, including discourse analysis, conversation analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, media and communication studies, multimodality, social semiotics, psychology and social anthropology.  

The seminar will take place on MS Teams.

There is no fee to participate.

Please find the call for papers here 

https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/the-institute/research-and-conferences/projects/hks-en