Health and Science Communication

What does it mean to be a science communicator in today’s media landscape? How do online media shape the way in which health information is shared, portrayed, and understood?

New digital spaces such as blogs, aggregators, and social media platforms are rapidly transforming the world’s media landscape—as well as the way in which we share, consume, and engage with scholarly work. Sharing Health Research is a multi-year, SSHRC-funded project that examines these ongoing transformations in the online media landscape, with a focus on how they contribute to the wider communication and uptake of health research.

Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the project examines how, where, and among whom health information circulates online, in the form of research publications, preprints, news stories, social media posts, and more. Expanding on our previous research on digital science communication, it seeks provide insights into the sharing of reliable health information and to support academics, journalists, and other science communicators in effectively engaging online audiences.

Find out more

Learn more about one of our newest projects, Doctors Who Vlog
Check out the media coverage of our latest findings
Dive into findings from our recent SSHRC-funded research exploring the Canadian science communication landscape

Related Publications

Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Alperin, J. P., Riedlinger, M., & Maggio, L. A. (2024). From impact metrics and open science to communicating research: Journalists’ awareness of academic controversies. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.03.609638 Download

Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). “I’d like to think I’d be able to spot one if I saw one”: How science journalists navigate predatory journals. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.24.604934 Download

Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2024). ‘My doctor self and my human self’: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.15384

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Why do health professionals create content on social media? Uses and Gratifications of Egyptian “physician vloggers” on YouTube. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(2), 188–210. https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1287 Download

Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2023). “My doctor self and my human self”: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.27.23296214 Download

Moorhead, L. L., Fleerackers, A., & Maggio, L. (2023). “It’s my job”: a qualitative study of the mediatization of science within the scientist-journalist relationship. Journal of Science Communication, 22(4), A05. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22040205 Download

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). “Influencers” or “doctors”? Physicians’ presentation of self in Youtube and Facebook videos. International Journal of Communication, 17(0), 24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19700 Download

Ratcliff, C. L., Fleerackers, A., Wicke, R., Harvill, B., King, A. J., & Jensen, J. D. (2023). Framing COVID-19 preprint research as uncertain: a mixed-method study of public reactions. Health Communication, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2164954 Download

Atef, N. (2022). If the Evidence is Not Research, What is it? Egyptian Physicians’ Explanations of the Lack of Research Citations in their Health Vlogs. Health & New Media Research, 6(2), 299–317. https://doi.org/10.22720/hnmr.2022.6.2.299 Download

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2022). Academic explanatory journalism and emerging COVID-19 science: how social media accounts amplify The Conversation’s preprint coverage. Media International Australia, 1329878X221145022. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221145022 Download

Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Maggio, L. A., Fagan, K., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Science in motion: A qualitative analysis of journalists’ use and perception of preprints. PLOS ONE, 17(11), e0277769. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277769 Download

Fleerackers, A., Nehring, L., Maggio, L. A., Enkhbayar, A., Moorhead, L., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data. Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04510-7 Download

Fleerackers, A. (2022). A focus on science communication at #ICA22. Journal of Science Communication, 21(6), R01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21060601 Download

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Doctors on YouTube: Exploring the Uses and Gratifications of Health Vloggers. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/pb47w Download

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19: an investigation into the use of preprints by digital media outlets. Health Communication, 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1864892 Download

Maggio, L. A., & Fleerackers, A. (2022). Preprints in health professions education: raising awareness and shifting culture. Academic Medicine, 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001

Riedlinger, M., Fleerackers, A., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Guenther, L., Joubert, M., & Osman, K. (2021). The conversation, ten years on: assessing the impact of a unique scholarly publishing initiative. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12130 Download

Riedlinger, M., Schiele, A., & Barata, G. (2021). Emerging practices in science communication in Canada. In B. Schiele, X. Liu, & M. Bauer (Eds.), Science Cultures in a Diverse World: Knowing, Sharing, Caring (pp. 91–109). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5379-7_5

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Replication Data for: Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WG9VDS

Velho, R. M., & Barata, G. (2020). Profiles, challenges, and motivations of science Youtubers. Frontiers in Communication, 5, 542936. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.542936 Download

Barata, G., & Manica, D. (2020, November 6). Stem-cells from menstrual blood in Twitter: Paper attention on social media. The 2020 Altmetrics Workshop: The Future is Now, Virtual. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Stem-cells-from-menstrual-blood-in-Twitter%3A-paper-Barata-Manica/08a060e69e4d340c2f291ebbb7c307fb13032006 Download Download

Gascoigne, T., Schiele, B., Leach, J., & Riedlinger, M. (Eds.). (2020). Communicating science: a global perspective. ANU Press. https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.22459/CS.2020

Riedlinger, M., Barata, G., & Schiele, A. (2019). The landscape of science communication in contemporary Canada: A focus on anglophone actors and networks. Cultures of Science, 2(1), 51–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/209660831900200105 Download

Riedlinger, M., Schiele, A., & Barata, G. (2018, September 16). Mapping the contemporary science communication landscape in Canada. Science & You Conference, Beijing, China.

Barata, G., Riedlinger, M., Schiele, A., & Pablo Alperin, J. (2018, September 16). Using social media metrics to identify science communicators in Canada. Science & You Conference, Beijing, China. Download

Barata, G., Caldas, G., Gascoigne, T., Barata, G., Caldas, G., & Gascoigne, T. (2017). Brazilian science communication research: national and international contributions. Anais Da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, AHEAD, 0–0. https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765201720160822