In my Ph.D. project, I explore – through a critical-constructive study of news media's coverage of depression, COPD, and dementia – how the use of rhetorical strategies (such as topoi, framing, and narratives) in health journalism simultaneously enables and limits the public conversation about health and diseases, and the significance of this rhetorical tension for the establishment of openness and plurality in the public conversation about health and diseases.

The project is situated at the intersection of three emerging fields: Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, Health Journalism, and Critical Health Communication. With this positioning, the project seeks, in addition to informing the research field and qualifying the practice of health journalism, to contribute a methodological clarification of the potential synergistic effect inherent in the collaboration between these three emerging fields.

The project is situated at the Center for Rhetoric and is affiliated with the research programme Media, Communication, and Society. In addition, the project collaborates closely with the Center for Health Communication.