Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the role played by online digital media technologies in health communication. It describes research on the latest trends in the use of web-based electronic health and smartphone-based mobile health technologies and surveys a growing genre of ambient health technologies in the form of conversational agents, wearables, and games. Two key concepts underlying affordances of these technologies—interactivity and tailoring—are introduced next, followed by a discussion of theoretical and practical challenges posed by widespread source layering in networked media used for dissemination of health information and uneven credibility of Internet-based health information. Finally, the chapter notes inequities introduced by technology in privacy, quality of care, and access.