Rethinking Health Communication and Journalism in the Age of AI

Dear Colleagues,

Health communication has long been shaped by journalistic norms, professional practices, and institutional news organizations. However, contemporary health information flows now operate within increasingly complex media ecosystems defined by platform journalism, algorithmic curation, automation, and emerging forms of artificial intelligence. News about health and medicine circulates alongside user-generated content, influencer communication, public health messaging, and AI-generated texts and visuals—often across platforms that blur the boundaries between journalism, strategic communication, and interpersonal exchange.

This Special Issue seeks to advance scholarship on health communication in the age of platformed, automated, and AI-mediated journalism. We invite interdisciplinary research that examines how evolving media infrastructures, technologies, and power relations shape the production, distribution, interpretation, and impact of health-related information.

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that explore the changing roles of journalists, platforms, algorithms, and audiences in shaping health communication, broadly defined.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Public trust in health institutions (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, WHO, NIH) in AI-mediated information environment;
• News or health literacy and health news evaluation skills in the age of AI;
• AI-personalized health information and behavioral intention;
• AI, data journalism, and computational journalism in health news reporting;
• Health communication and audience engagement with health information across social media, influencer, and creator platforms;
• Health journalism in algorithmically curated and platform-dominated environments;
• Generative AI, automation, and their implications for health misinformation and disinformation;
• Platform governance, moderation, and health-related content visibility;
• Journalistic authority, expertise, and trust in AI-mediated media systems;
• Ethical challenges related to AI, automation, and health communication;
• Health crises, risk communication, and public health messaging in digitally networked media;
• Comparative or global perspectives on health communication and platform journalism;
• Methodological innovations for studying health communication in digital and AI-driven environment.

Dr. Kim Bissell
Dr. Hae Yeon Seo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journalism and Media is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• health communication
• health journalism
• artificial intelligence
• trust and credibility
• platforms and algorithms
• misinformation and disinformation
• audience engagement and literacy