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EDITORIAL article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Health Communication
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1512373
This article is part of the Research Topic Anti-stigma Communication in the 21st Century: Theory, Research, and Applications View all 7 articles

Editorial: Anti-stigma Communication in the 21st Century: Theory, Research, and Applications

Provisionally accepted
Alexander Röhm Alexander Röhm 1*Allison Kwesell Allison Kwesell 2Sergio Villanueva Baselga Sergio Villanueva Baselga 3
  • 1 Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany
  • 2 Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida, United States
  • 3 University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Stigmas are created, spread, amplified, or reduced through communication (cf. Meisenbach, 2010;Smith, 2007). Many people are affected by structural, public, or self-stigmatization because of their gender, race, age, disability, health status, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc. Attempts to mitigate stigmatization through interpersonal, mediated, or mass communication remain challenging and yield inconsistent results. Moreover, findings regarding successful or unsuccessful communication approaches are difficult to compare among studies in the context of health communication as well as across other related fields of research. This is due to the fact that substantial differences exist in the literature regarding theoretical conceptualizations (cf. Link and Phelan, 2001), operationalization and measurement approaches (cf. Bresnahan and Zhuang, 2015), as well as communication-based intervention strategies (cf. Stutterheim et al., 2023). Meanwhile, international organizations call for urgent and quick solutions to mitigate stigmatization, resulting in rushed and often insufficient initiatives with limited impact and incongruent results. reading a disease-affirming article or more positive attitudes after reading a disease-affirming, but 98 also fat-rights affirming article. These findings provide valuable insights for the understanding of 99 linguistic frames and the persuasive power of anti-stigma communication efforts. 100 In conclusion, all six contributions shed light on the current scope of anti-stigma communication 102 theory, research, and application in the 21st century. While there is an increasing understanding of 103 promising destigmatizing communication approaches, various old and new challenges emerge that 104 deserve close attention in future research. 105

    Keywords: Anti-stigma, Communication, Theory, Research, applications

    Received: 16 Oct 2024; Accepted: 11 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Röhm, Kwesell and Villanueva Baselga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Alexander Röhm, Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

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