Communicating health

As the UK grapples with the resurgence of whooping cough, it becomes increasingly important for public health messaging to adopt a nuanced and multi-strategy approach to vaccination appeals. In recent weeks, the UK has witnessed a notable surge in whooping cough cases, a severe infection particularly dangerous to children and pregnant women. Public health messaging has strongly emphasized vaccination as a crucial measure to combat this infection. Naturally, this is the case in the official communication of the UK Health Security Agency. BBC's coverage highlights worrying rise of cases However, a quick examination of the mainstream media coverage reveals what could be described as a hesitancy to include direct vaccination appeals, as can be surmised from a BBC’s report  which emphasized the threatening aspect, and a local news report which highlighted its regional spread . While mentioning a decline in vaccination rates, the coverage avoided direct calls to vaccinate and mere...

Biomediatized directives subtly leverage a positive framing of the healthcare system in the hope this may influence how the public feels about it Healthcare organizations need to explore innovative communication strategies, particularly in a landscape increasingly marked by public distrust towards healthcare messaging.  Twitter offers a dynamic platform for the NHS (National Health Service) to experiment with new communication tones, with the medical docu-series Geordie Hospital acting as a focal point. Screenshot of Geordie Hospital's homepage on an NHS trust's site  What are Biomediatized Directives? Biomediatized directives are a category of tweets categorized to refer to messages crafted by an NHS trust to subtly encourage viewers to watch Geordie Hospital.  They are characterized by their blend of praise for healthcare workers with promotional language, framing the show as a realistic portrayal of the healthcare system. For instance, a tweet may call to "Meet some...

In today's communication landscape, multimodal speech, based on text, emojis, links, pictures and more arguably augments the nature of our messages  As part of a literature review I've been working on the use of speech acts on social media, I came across the distinction that authors of a study make between "Speech and Image Acts" in branding messages on social media.  Having for sometime settled for the idea that speech acts are multimodal in today's hybrid polymedia system, I wander whether the need to distinguish between speech and image acts is necessary.  Multimodal speaks a thousand images and words: replacing the old adage (Created with ChatGPT) The way we communicate online defies simple categorization. A single social media post can be a demand, a plea, an informative statement, and a source of visual delight – all at once.  Does it make sense, then, to stick with the traditional distinction between "speech acts" (focused on words) and "imag...

 In the era of social media, organizations like the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are leveraging platforms like Twitter to communicate with publics in multifaceted ways. A fascinating case in point is how the NHS trust used Twitter to communicate about  #GeordieHospital, a documentary series  filmed on various of its premises and broadcast on Channel 4. Analysing these tweets through the lens of speech act theory is a fascinating if laborious task which is of value to tackle one of the many challenges of understanding human communication in the digital age. NHS digital speech acts are multifunctional ( created via OpenArt ) Breaking tweets into speech acts Speech act theory, a cornerstone of linguistic philosophy, breaks down communication into three types of acts: locutionary (the act of saying something), illocutionary (the intent behind saying something), and perlocutionary (the effect of saying something). In the context of the NHS trust's tweets,...

Health communication plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes and behaviors that impact the well-being of individuals and communities.  However, the notion of persuasion in public health communication has become a subject of concern, as it raises questions about how government agencies and experts address knowledge gaps and public ignorance. In the social media communicational landscapes of today, health officers tend to tread carefully to avoid appearing patronizing or paternalistic. Nuanced landscape for health communication in the age of  social media (Created with content of this post  via OpenAI ) Navigating language and perception As revealed by Charles Briggs' interviews with health officials in California, there is unease regarding certain words used in health campaigns.  Terms like "message," "public," and "target" are perceived as projecting a top-down approach and demographic profiling.  To address this concern, some of Brigg’s intervie...

I have in recent weeks been preparing for a study about Channel4's  television series  Geordie Hospital, which was on air last year and triggered a wave of activity on Twitter with the #GeordieHospital hashtag (#GH).  #GH was filmed in NHS hospitals in the UK and widely tweeted as the country was recovering a modicum of normality after the Covid-19 lockdowns. This illustrates the importance that communication has for healthcare providers and arguably for everyone who is a stakeholder in public health outcomes today.  Channel 4's TV series was filmed in hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne GH is valuable to explore processes of biomedicalization,  described by Briggs and Hallin  as 'the greater interpenetration of biomedicine into other social structures, such as industry, the state, and the mass media'.  Why study a medical show and its tweets? Big concepts such as biomedicalization don't readily convey the importance of researching medical t...