Editors' Introduction to Volume 9 Issue 2

This article demonstrates the value of sentiment analysis for contextualizing audiences in Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) by comparing vaccine related newspaper comments to non-vaccine related comments in the New York Times from 2017–2023 (n = 22,330,999). Our results show that while all comments skew negative, following a similar trend line, after the emergence of COVID-19, vaccine related comments decouple from the negative trend of baseline non-vaccine comments, becoming more negative and volatile. These results raise additional questions about the nature of the negativity for vaccine related comments, and we provide a properly sampled dataset for follow-up research to encourage iterative investigation into the public response to vaccine policy. In addition to these findings, this article calls for broader engagement with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and data science in RHM.

Editors' Introduction to Volume 9 Issue 1

What makes societies see, acknowledge, and constitute an issue as a crisis which should be acted upon? We address this by examining a specific instance of media attention to a creeping health crisis, namely the communication of an individual non-governmental actor, the influencer Ingeborg Senneset. We ask: What is the rhetorical agency of an individual opinion leader (influencer) in a health risk situation such as the creeping AMR-crisis? Our study demonstrates that the rhetorical agency of Senneset as an influencer rests on three interrelated communicative strategies: First, she enacts what we term a multiple ethos implying both the expertise of a professional and the authenticity of an ordinary person; Second, she uses narratives of fear with a rational grounding; Third, she establishes and works rhetorically within a diverse digital ecology where she publishes, posts, and comments on several different platforms, where the different posts and publications reinforce each other.

Editors' Introduction to Volume 8 issue 4

Editors' Introduction to Volume 8 issue 3

In response to a documented disproportionate incidence of suicide in rural America, this autoethnographic essay explores specific ideological and historical factors influencing this disparity and mental health issues connected directly to farmers. Situating her discussion in the context of her family’s five-generation farming operation, Ryan draws on dominant “good farmer” constructs and intersectional identities to critique mental health resources available in a Corn Belt farming community. The chronic pressure placed on farmers in a productivist agricultural climate urging them to do more and be more requires acknowledgement of the complexities and nuances of farmer identities and behaviors.

Editors' Introduction to Rhetoric of Health and Medicine 8-1.

At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was at war with two seemingly different enemies: the first was Spanish colonial rule in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The second enemy was the yellow fever virus which wreaked havoc on the physical and economic welfare of the U.S. In this essay, I conduct a rhetorical history about how the discovery of the mosquito vector for yellow fever was memorialized as a triumph of U.S. medicine, and how medical-military topoi are deployed to describe “conquest” over the virus. I argue that the nonhuman mosquito vector enables retroactive discussion of victory over an invisible enemy, creating rhetorical space between the realities of U.S imperialism and medical violence. This rhetorical history has consequences for how medical-military topoi continue to influence ways that the U.S. uses border control in response to pandemics, particularly those with nonhuman vectors or origins.

Editors' introduction to 7.3.

Editors' Introduction to Issue 6.4

Editors' Introduction to vol. 6 issue 3

Editors' Introduction to 6.1.

Editors' Introduction to 5.4.

This article considers how scientists and other researchers frame and integrate online patient registry data into their work. In the case of rare chronic conditions, online patient registry data extend the geographic boundaries that limit research involvement and make efficient use of limited federal funding for research. Through a rhetorical analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles, which I evaluate as artifacts, I show how a selection of them seek to recognize patients’ labor through traditional acknowledgements and provide tangible benefits to patient communities. At the same time, the proliferation of online patient registries and lack of publications suggests that patients’ labor is often overlooked and disregarded. This work reveals how online patient data registries change our understanding and approach to researching chronicity. I conclude by offering ethical considerations for rhetoricians who choose to use and publish data from these registries.

Special Issue Editors' Introduction, Rhetoric of Chronicity

Editors' introduction to 5.1

Editors' introduction to volume 4, issue 2.

Guest editor's introduction to the special issue on the rhetoric of food and health.

Guest editor's introduction to the special issue on the rhetoric of food and health.

The intersection of industry sponsorship, government regulation, academic interests, and medical journals is a core interest in biomedical research, and one that overlaps with concerns in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM). At stake in conversations about this intersection are authority and participation: who is and is not invited to offer opinions and, even when invited, whose opinions are taken seriously. Following, colleagues with ties to the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) present their ideas in response to questions about authorship and authority posed by another, who is also an RHM scholar. The answers of medical journal editors and publications professionals employed by corporate entities largely align with the view that both authorship and authority should be determined by scientific practice and knowledge rather than power relations or politics. A philosopher who gave an invited plenary talk at the national ISMPP meeting and participated in the organization’s first white paper offers a different perspective, considering the ways that fields self-constitute in part by bounding authority and authorship.

The following commentary follows on and flows out of an initial response to reading “Multiple Voices on Authorship and Authority in Biomedical Publications” by DeTora and colleagues (2020), which appeared in volume 3 issue 4 of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. This response, by rhetorician of science, health, and medicine Celeste Condit, begins by situating questions about authorship and authority in biomedicine against a classical rhetorical source, Plato’s Gorgias. In so doing, Condit identifies a messy truth—that rhetoric potentially can pose dangers when applied to health and medicine. The authors then construct a Platonic dialogue that situates authorship, ethos, and authority in the context of biomedicine. Ultimately, the two authors illustrate the messiness that results when attempting to mount a discussion of these terms across intellectual registers.

Building connections with professionals in subject matter disciplines—practitioners and/or academics—is a growing area of interest for many scholars working in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM). However, strategies for creating and building meaningful, productive interdisciplinary relationships has not been a central theme in RHM-focused scholarship. This entry endeavors to address this gap by using RHM’s emerging version of the “dialogue” genre to describe the author’s experience co-chairing the communications track for an international public health conference. The author weaves in commentary from contributors who participated in the conference and discusses and reflects upon two key challenges that emerged: 1) differences in language choice/terminology, and 2) epistemic conflict. Through this reflective discussion, this dialogue proposes several strategies that RHM scholars might draw from in building their own interdisciplinary relationships moving forward: 1) negotiate shared meanings and goals, 2) find commonalities, and 3) normalize rhetorical inquiry.  Featured Contributors: Nicholas Bustamante, MFA; Alina Deshpande, PhD; Amy Ising, MS; Jamie Newman, PhD; Kirk St.Amant, PhD

Searching the Internet for health information is now routine; recommending and receiving medical expertise on social media platforms such as Instagram (IG) during medical treatment remains understudied. After analyzing more than 200 images on IG related to (in)fertility treatment, we employed a directed content analysis. In this manuscript, we investigate self- disclosure related to in vitro fertilization treatment on IG and the types of linguistic (e.g., written affirmations, hashtags) and paralinguistic (e.g., emoji) feedback given in response. We found users on IG received emotional (e.g., expressions of care), informational (e.g., medical and treatment advice), tangible (e.g., gifted medicine and care packages), and belonging (e.g., #ttcsisters) functions of social support in response to self-disclosure (Uchino, 2004). By concluding that social media platforms allow for unique social support exchanges, we offer theoretical and practical implications for scholars, practitioners, and patients interested in social support, supportive communication, and emoji on social media platforms.

In this article, we argue that Down syndrome (DS) advocates seeking to intervene in medical exigences are poorly positioned by their audiences of patients and physicians. To combat this problem, we find that some advocates, specifically mothers of children with DS, recuperate their ethos through two primary rhetorical strategies: shaping contexts and developing invitational ethos. Advocates are able to more freely draw from maternal authority when they shape the contexts of their messages, creating new venues and limiting their audiences. On the other hand, advocates can also appease medical authority by developing an invitational ethos in which they create the conditions for their own participation and offer their own perspectives. Through the use of these two strategies, advocates are able to claim their positions as mothers, while still cultivating positive ethos.