The rapid development of the Internet and social media platforms has transformed the landscape of medical science communication where a variety of societal stakeholders, including the research academy, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and patients, increasingly turn to the readily usable functionalities of online information and knowledge platforms. This transformation has had a significant impact on digital communication within the medical academy and the healthcare sector as a whole. Opportunities are spawning an increasingly diverse digital ecosystem of less formal practices of medical scholarly communication on web and social media platforms (research blogs, tweets, newspaper articles, press interviews, ResearchGate, WikiPathways, info-graphics and video-abstracts), making the scientific process more democratic and responsive to societal needs and fostering ‘open’, rapid scientific communication between researchers, citizens, and other societal actors. This book brings together academics and practitioners from the area of linguistics and other fields to critically discuss and rethink emerging trends and variations in medical science communication models where culture, knowledge, expertise, and identity are played out, contributing to the discursive study of texts and genres that matter to internal and external processes and practices of medical science communication.
