[Air-L] Call for EJHC Special Issue - Online Health Communities in the Vortex of Healthcare Controversies

[Sara Atanasova]

European Journal of Health Communication (EJHC) invites submissions to
a *Special
Issue on “Online Health Communities in the Vortex of Healthcare
Controversies: Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Studies”* (Guest
Editors: Gregor Petrič & Sara Atanasova, University of Ljubljana).

Online health communities (OHCs) are dynamic and insightful places where a
variety of communicative processes can be detected; these processes are
linked to tensions between different levels of accessibility, different
forms of interaction, various streams of knowledge, tensions between low
and high e-health literacy, conflicts between expert and patient expertise,
positive and negative aspects of patient empowerment, and the like. This
special issue aims to address the tensions, opportunities, and perils of
OHCs that have important effects on individuals such as patients,
caregivers, and health professionals as well as on patient-health
professional interaction, the healthcare system and its services. This
special issue is open but not limited to studies that intersect or
interconnect with the following topics:

   1. Communicative dynamics in OHCs and their controversial outcomes
   2. Quality, validity, credibility of health-related information in OHCs
   3. Causes and consequences of (dis)trust and (mis)information in OHCs
   4. Patient empowerment and disempowerment and their effects on the
   self-management of health issues, decision making processes, and trust in
   health experts
   5. Empowerment of health-professionals participating in OHCs
   6. Impact of patient-health professional interaction in OHCs on offline
   patient-health professional relationships
   7. The potential of OHCs for co-creation processes in the context of
   healthcare policies and businesses
   8. OHCs’ role in informing policy, regulators, and health decision makers
   9. Other topics related to OHCs

This special issue welcomes innovative studies and invites both theoretical
and empirical papers with qualitative, quantitative, or mixed method
approaches, so long as they address at least one of the above topics.
*Submission Format*

We welcome submissions that fit any of the EJHC formats: original research
papers, theoretical papers, methodological papers, review articles, brief
research reports. For further information on the article types, please see
www.ejhc.org/about/submissions
<http://www.ejhc.org/about/submissions#articletypes>.

*More information about the call:
https://ejhc.org/calls/SI-OnlineHealthCommunities
<https://ejhc.org/calls/SI-OnlineHealthCommunities>.*
Deadline for submission is *28 February 2022*.