From a discourse analytic framework, the article analyses health blogs and patient's forum discussions in which parents to children with congenital heart defects recontextualize medical professional knowledge and share their own experiences. The study show how the two types of online media may serve as a means for parents to attain expert status in their own case by sharing lay knowledge expressed as an amalgamation of the two key perspectivesprofessional and experiencedas an indivisible unit. Monological discourses, such as narrating, in blogs and more direct and immediate responses in forum discussions are noted as examples of differences in how medical facts are explained and negotiated, how advice is provided and how patient expertise is created. The study also show how blogs and especially forum discussions are used to problematize the validity of actions and opinions of medical staff. The role of developing patient expertise in epistemic communities online may therefore come with a risk of spreading misrepresentation of medical cases.

The study examines online searching as a digital health literacy practice and focuses on parents of children with congenital heart defects. Over the period of four years, we have conducted interviews with couples at different stages of pregnancy or parenthood and have encouraged them to reflect on their literacy practices when receiving a heart defect diagnosis, during the remaining time of their pregnancy and when living with a child with a heart defect. We have also read and analysed health blogs written by parents and focused on extracts where literacy events are described. Searching for information and support online is one of the most frequent practices amongst the participants in the study. The aim of this paper is therefore to highlight the complexity of looking for information online in order to take health decisions and provide care to a child with congenital illness. Based on what parents say they do when searching online, we focus on three main paths to knowledge: looking for medical facts, looking for other parents’ experiences and looking for practical information. We discuss digital health literacy practices as complex activities that often involve parents in the diagnosis and in the child’s medical care to such an extent that parents build up knowledge and become experts, not only in finding information and support but in talking and writing about their child’s illness. We also problematise the notion of trustworthy health information and show how facts and opinions often go hand in hand in platforms where health issues are discussed. Finally, we show some of the affordances and restrictions inherent in using the internet as a source for meaning making and learning about children’s health. The results reinforce our understanding of the socially framed nature of health literacy and make us focus on the digital as an additional important aspect in the practice of health literacy.

This article explores how the world’s refugee situation is constructed discursively in photographs on the website of Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF) Sweden in order to discern what discourses humanitarian aid communication draws upon to frame the world’s refugee situation as being worthy of support. The main conclusion is that the refugee situation is portrayed as an activity of waiting, where forcibly displaced people are restrained from continuing on with their lives. By highlighting personal experiences, the phenomenon of flight is humanised: Refugees are constructed in need of support, and MSF is constructed as actionable and trustworthy. The website’s visitors, are invited to become a part of and to engage in the life of the refugees and the work performed by the organisation. Due to a combination of different styles of appealing the overall image of the refugee situation draws on discourses of morality, solidarity, ethnical and gender equality.

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In this article, patient activity in 8 audio recorded specialist consultations on fetal cardiology is investigated in order to explore how, why and when patients tend to participate in encounters in which the doctor dominates the interaction. The overall question is: How can the participation of patients in the consultations be connected to the development of higher levels of health literacy, i.e. to interactive literacy and to critical literacy? Patient participation is here understood as interactive action and is analyzed in terms of different interactive moves, which are related to different recurring topics. Despite the highly standardized format of the consultations, there is a large variation between the patients’ participation: between 0.7 and 2.8 moves per minute. The patients participate most during the topics ‘Prevalence’ and ‘Consultations’ and least during the topic ‘The normal heart’. Although most of the patients' moves are responses to what the doctor says, they remarkably often pose questions and use so called rejoinders. By posing questions, they take control of the information flow and sometimes even change the topics. By using rejoinders, they analyze the problems involved in the discussion e.g. by asking for clarifications or confirmation. Patients with a low over-all participation rate also use fewer moves that indicate higher literacy levels. The qualitative analysis problematizes the idea of a simple scale from basic literacy to critical literacy. Moves that indicate basic literacy skills are interactively important for the learning activity, led by the doctor. However, patients who mainly support the doctor’s initiatives don’t take the opportunity to influence the flow of information in ways that might favor their health literacy development.