Project Details
Projekt
Organizations’ communication about the use of digital media for the self-management of chronic diseases (IP6: organizations)
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Juliana Raupp
Subject Area
Communication Sciences
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456132969
Background: Individuals with chronic conditions are embedded in an organizational and institutional context. Their decisions about how to manage their chronic conditions and whether and how to use digital media to do so are not least dependent on how organizations communicate about these technologies. App providers such as pharmaceutical companies, technology startups, or health insurance companies promote digital media technologies for the self-management of chronic diseases. Regulating agencies, public authorities, and consumer organizations provide information about these technologies and attempt to offer guidance to people with chronic diseases. This project investigates the communication strategies of these different organizations: How do organizations inform and communicate about apps and digital services for chronic disease self-management? Objectives: IP6: organizations aims to shed light on the organizational context of individual use of digital media for chronic disease self-management. It aims to identify organizational communication strategies, to discover prevailing frames in organizational communication for chronic disease self-management, and to analyze the relationship between organizational type, communication strategy, and frames. For the Research Unit, the project seeks to provide a link between projects at the micro and macro levels. Work program: The project consists of three consecutive studies: (1) an organizational analysis with the purpose of developing a typology of different organizations, (2) an expert survey with communication managers in the different organizations to investigate their motives and backgrounds, and (3) a content and framing analysis of apps and related information and promotional materials. Collaborations within the Research Unit: IP6: organizations will employ bilateral collaborations mainly with IP2: effects, IP3: privacy, IP7: reporting, IP4: healthcare, but also with IP8: Social Media, and IP5: peers; participation in CG: framing approach and CG: network approach. Expected results/contributions: IP6: organizations contributes to health communication research by focusing on the organizational level, which has received little attention to date, and in particular on organization-specific communication strategies about digital self-management. It advances research on strategic organizational communication both theoretically and empirically by analyzing and reflecting on a relevant and hitherto little-studied area of digital communication.
DFG Programme
Research Units
