Communicating health

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 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,...

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...