Shaping knowledge in health communication: Information structure and editorial strategy in EuroHealthNet magazine

This study intends to build on burgeoning research strands dedicated to the study of health communication and emerging genres of science popularization and dissemination by exploring the not‑for‑profit organization EuroHealthNet, resulting from an inter-European partnership, whose mission is to “help build a sustainable, fair, and inclusive Europe through healthier communities and to tackle health inequalities within and between European States” (https://eurohealthnet.eu/). In light of its mission and the heterogeneous nature of its target audience – including but not limited to European health institutions, health professionals, and the general public – a primary premise of this study is that, for it to be effective, EuroHealthNet’s communication must take heed of, be sensitive to, and be receptive of the diverse linguacultural backgrounds and levels of knowledge of specialized discourses of its audience. Thus, this study, which draws on a larger project funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU – explores fourteen editions of EuroHealthNet’s magazine, available on its official website, with particular attention to how this discourse community constructs, interprets, and uses different (sub-)genres to achieve its communicative goals. We draw on the multiperspective and multidimensional framework provided by critical genre analysis (Bhatia, 2017) to explore both the text-internal factors via information structure and the text-external factors via tag, keyness and deictic analysis that characterize EuroHealthNet magazine articles.