Multimodality and Medical Communication on Instagram: The Case of Informative Reels about Women’s Health
Abstract
The present study analyzes informative reels as an emerging genre in medical communication on Instagram, produced by medinfluencers specializing in women’s health. Based on a corpus of 30 reels published by Spanish gynecologists and oncologists on Instagram, the study examines their macro-structural, metadiscursive, and multimodal features. The results show that informative reels combine three functions: educational, relational, and infotainment. The professional’s constant physical and vocal presence, eye contact with the camera, and deictic gestures help construct epistemic authority, reinforced by linguistic resources such as certainty markers and self-mentions. Likewise, visual effects, music, audience appeals, and inclusive deictics foster emotional affiliation with the audience. The study reveals subdisciplinary differences and underscores the need for metadiscursive and multimodal approaches to understand health communication in rapidly evolving digital environments.
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