Communication and Health: An Introduction

Elliott, Charlene

doi:10.1007/978-981-16-4290-6_1

Charlene Elliott³

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Abstract

Several years ago, we approached Palgrave with a proposal for an edited book on communication and health, an area in which we have been actively engaged, independently and as collaborators for more than a decade. The book would contain critical perspectives on various health topics and, in particular, would explore the unique contribution that communication scholars can bring to the study of health.

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Notes

1.
“Mr. Covid” is the personified, rather creepy, anti-hero of the Alberta Government’s $2 million COVID-19 awareness campaign, launched in December 2020.
2.
Critical communication scholarship remains a minor thread, however. A 2010 review of 22 years of research (and 642 articles) published in Health Communication revealed that only 1.4% of articles had critical paradigms (Kim et al., 2010, p. 492).
3.
See Mohan Jyoti Dutta’s (2010) excellent scholarship on the role critical health communication scholars have to play in foregrounding issues of “social justice, equity participation, and structural transformation” (p. 534) when it comes to health communication.
4.
This notion is taken from Sheryl Hamilton’s (2019) editorial on “Mediating Disease Cultures”, where she refers to “multimediation of disease” (p. 152) represented by the various media examined by the contributors. Hamilton (2019) does not specify health, but the concept equally applies.
5.
Biomediatization captures how medical and health experts and expertise are increasingly intertwined with media spheres; biocommunicability is about how health communication works to teach people about health, illness, and the “authoritative producers of health knowledge” (Holland, 2021, p. 167).

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Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Charlene Elliott

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Editors and Affiliations

Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Charlene Elliott
School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Josh Greenberg

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Elliott, C. (2022). Communication and Health: An Introduction. In: Elliott, C., Greenberg, J. (eds) Communication and Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4290-6_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4290-6_1
Published: 01 January 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-4289-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-4290-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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