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With a particular focus on language, discourse, and interaction, the event explores how communication practices in health across digital and socially situated linguistic and cultural contexts are increasingly mediated, augmented, or constrained by a range of emerging sociotechnical systems. These include artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, digital platform infrastructures, and more, which are influencing health-related attitudes, decisions, and behaviours.

As digital technologies continue to transform healthcare delivery, public health messaging, patient engagement, health education, and behaviour change processes, the role of language, discourse, and interaction becomes increasingly critical. Communication shapes how health information and health educational content are understood across linguistic and cultural boundaries; how credibility and empathy are constructed; how access and power relations are negotiated; how care and health education are provided, communicated, and experienced; and how behavioural outcomes are influenced. Understanding how individuals and communities respond to, interpret, and act upon technologically mediated communication related to health across diverse cultural and linguistic contexts is, therefore, central to advancing research in this field. At the same time, challenges such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, ethical concerns, and unequal access, together with ongoing technological advancements, highlight the need for interdisciplinary approaches to health communication and behaviour change research that are sensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity.

This conference aims to provide a collaborative space to critically engage with these developments, fostering dialogue across disciplines, promoting the co-creation of knowledge, and encouraging innovative perspectives on how digitally mediated communication practices shape experiences of care, access, engagement, and decision-making, and influence health behaviours in evolving digital landscapes.

We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Interactional dynamics and language use in telehealth and AI-assisted healthcare encounters
• AI-mediated and digitally mediated health communication and its impact on health behaviour change, health perceptions, health education, and care experiences
• Communication of care and health in digital and AI-enabled health environments across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts
• Misinformation, trust, and ethical challenges in digital and AI-driven health communication across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts
• Inequalities in access, participation, and behavioural outcomes in multilingual and multicultural digital health communication
• Interdisciplinary approaches to digital health communication and behaviour change research

Submissions are encouraged from a wide range of disciplines, including applied linguistics, health communication, behavioural science, intercultural studies, sociology, public health, media studies, psychology, and computer science. Contributions are expected to maintain a clear focus on language, discourse, and interaction in the context of health communication and health behaviour change in the evolving digital landscape. Researchers at all career stages are warmly invited to contribute, with postgraduate and early-career researchers especially encouraged to participate.