Health Communication and Behaviour Change in the Evolving Digital Landscape: Language, Discourse and Interaction

Dear Colleagues,

We warmly invite contributions to this Special Issue of Languages, “Health Communication and Behaviour Change in the Evolving Digital Landscape: Language, Discourse and Interaction”, following discussions at the Interdisciplinary Conference Health Communication and Behaviour Change in the Evolving Digital Landscape: Language, Discourse and Interaction (funded by Warwick’s Interdisciplinary Research Spotlight-Health), which took place at the University of Warwick on 16 July 2026. The conference focused on how emerging technologies are reshaping healthcare encounters, care communication, patient engagement, health education and behavioural decision-making, experiences of care, access, participation, and health outcomes, while attending to ethical and social challenges. It brought together contributions examining health communication and behaviour change in digital and AI-mediated environments, with a focus on how language, discourse, and interaction play a role in trust, misinformation, inequality, and culturally diverse health contexts.

Recent research highlights the value of examining digitally mediated healthcare delivery through language, discourse, and interactional lenses, showing how communication shapes participation, decision-making, authority, and patient involvement (Seuren et al., 2024). Specifically, communication shapes how health information and health educational content are understood across linguistic and cultural boundaries; how credibility and empathy are constructed; how access and power relations are negotiated; how care and health education are provided, communicated, and experienced; and how behavioural outcomes are influenced. There is also a growing body of evidence suggesting that digital communication technologies, including social media, mobile applications, chatbots, and AI-enabled systems, are being used to support health communication, patient engagement, and behaviour change (Clay et al., 2024; Weingott & Parkinson, 2025), while their effectiveness depends partly on how communication is designed and experienced by users.

Language and cultural backgrounds can shape people’s engagement with digital health technologies within communities (Whitehead et al., 2023). Understanding how individuals and communities respond to, interpret, and act upon technologically mediated communication related to health across diverse cultural and linguistic contexts is, therefore, central to advancing research in this field. At the same time, challenges such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, ethical concerns, and unequal access, together with ongoing technological advancements, highlight the need for interdisciplinary approaches to health communication and behaviour change research that are sensitive to both cultural and linguistic diversity.

These emerging findings lay the groundwork for this Special Issue to employ the lenses of language, discourse, and interaction to dive into how digital technologies transform healthcare delivery, public health messaging, patient engagement, health education, and behaviour change processes. This Special Issue aims to critically engage with these developments, fostering dialogue across disciplines, promoting the co-creation of knowledge, and encouraging innovative perspectives on how digitally mediated communication practices shape experiences of care, access, engagement, and decision-making, and influence health behaviours in evolving digital landscapes.

We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Interactional dynamics and language use in telehealth and AI-assisted healthcare encounters;
• AI-mediated and digitally mediated health communication and its impact on health behaviour change, health perceptions, health education, and care experiences;
• Communication of care and health in digital and AI-enabled health environments across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts;
• Misinformation, trust, and ethical challenges in digital and AI-driven health communication across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts;
• Inequalities in access, participation, and behavioural outcomes in multilingual and multicultural digital health communication;
• Interdisciplinary approaches to digital health communication and behaviour change research.

Submissions are encouraged from a wide range of disciplines, including applied linguistics, discourse studies, health communication, human-computer communication, intercultural communication, and related fields. Contributions are expected to maintain a clear focus on language, discourse, and interaction in the context of health communication and health behaviour change within the evolving digital landscape.

We request that, prior to submitting a full manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing the aims, datasets, methods, and results of the study, together with an indicative list of references (APA 7, with a valid DOI where applicable; references are not included in the word limit). Please send it to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative Completion Schedule

Abstract Submission Deadline: 4 December 2026

Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 18 December 2026

Full Manuscript Deadline: 26 February 2027

References

Clay, T. J., Da Custodia Steel, Z. J., & Jacobs, C. (2024). Human-computer interaction: A literature review of artificial intelligence and communication in healthcare. Cureus, 16(11), e73763. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.73763

Seuren, L. M., Ilomäki, S., Dalmaijer, E., Shaw, S. E., & Stommel, W. J. P. (2024). Communication in Telehealth: A State-of-the-Art Literature Review of Conversation-Analytic Research. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 57(1), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2024.2305045

Weingott, S., & Parkinson, J. (2025). The application of artificial intelligence in health communication development: A scoping review. Health Marketing Quarterly, 42(1), 67–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/07359683.2024.2422206

Whitehead, L., Talevski, J., Fatehi, F., & Beauchamp, A. (2023). Barriers to and facilitators of digital health among culturally and linguistically diverse populations: Qualitative systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e42719. https://doi.org/10.2196/42719

Dr. Yanyan Li
Prof. Dr. Alison Pilnick
Dr. Shawnea Sum Pok Ting
Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schnurr
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1600 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.