Communicative patterns in online health communities: A comparative study of Italian and Polish Ramona Bongelli, Anna Tereszkiewicz, Marina Paolanti, Ilaria Riccioni Plos One, 2025 This paper explores how online health platforms influence communication between patients and healthcare professionals, focusing on anxiety-related interactions in Italy and Poland. The study examines pairs of questions and answers, selected from Q&A services, within MioDottore and ZnanyLekarz, two medical platforms operating in these countries, with the main aim of identifying cross-cultural similarities and differences in communication strategies. Anxiety was chosen as a case study because it is one of the most prevalent mental health conditions, as revealed by research and national statistics, and because it is a prominent topic of discussion within online medical communities. Italy and Poland were chosen for comparison because of their different linguistic and socio-cultural contexts. Data were collected through an automated process based on a web-scraping algorithm and analysed using a mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. The results show some clear differences in communicative patterns: Italian patients tend to use more indirect and polite forms, while Polish patients use a more direct style. Among practitioners, gender-related differences were found in the Polish responses: Polish women tend to adopt a more emphatic style. By contrast, Italian responses seem to be more influenced by professional specialisation: while psychiatrists tend to adopt a more pragmatic style (focusing more on the informational and request-oriented aspects of users’ posts), psychologists typically adopt a more empathic approach (paying more attention to the emotional dimension, often linked to the suffering experiences disclosed by users). These findings highlight how digital health communication reflects broader cultural and professional norms, although further research is needed to confirm these patterns across different conditions and clinical settings.
Rhetorical questions and epistemic stance in an Italian Facebook corpus during the COVID-19 pandemic Ilaria Riccioni, Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli Open Linguistics, 2025 This study aims to investigate rhetorical questions (RQs) from the perspective of epistemic stance. The quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted on a corpus consisting of a set of comments extracted from the Facebook page of a major Italian newspaper ( Il Corriere della Sera ) regarding the news of the suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March 2021. The theoretical framework for analysing the comments containing RQs was the KUB (Knowing, Unknowing, Believing) epistemic model. The main objectives of the study were (1) to analyse the linguistic and epistemic structure of the 75 RQs present in the corpus; (2) to identify the epistemic stance of the questioner, focussing on the implicit assertion of the RQs and demonstrating how it can be not only strong (i.e. from a Knowing/Certain position), as commonly claimed in the literature, but also mitigated (i.e. from a Believing/Uncertain position), without losing its rhetorical value. Besides addressing these research questions, the study identified three specific types of RQs in addition to the common type (the most studied in the literature): adynatic (or RQs of impossibility), deontic (or RQs of duty/obligation), and epistemic (or RQs of belief).
‘The benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks... they say’ Italian Facebook users’ comments on the AstraZeneca vaccine suspension Ilaria Riccioni, Alessia Bertolazzi, Ramona Bongelli Language and Dialogue, 2024 This study aims to analyse Italian Internet users’ comments on two posts that appeared on the Facebook page of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera during a particularly critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (specifically, March 2021). At that time, the AstraZeneca vaccine had been temporarily suspended in some European countries due to confirmed reports of blood clots but subsequently declared “safe and effective” by the European Medicines Agency. Two datasets of comments were collected and analysed by combining automatic and manual, as well as quantitative and qualitative, methods. The main findings shed light on the orientation (agreement vs disagreement), construction of consensus and dissent, and epistemic positioning of Facebook users when they are confronted and engaged in dialogue with uncertain news about public health issues.
Health Risk Communication During COVID-19 Emergency in Italy: The Impact of Medical Experts’ Debate on Twitter Alessia Bertolazzi, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni Health Communication, 2024 The COVID-19 emergency underlined the importance of an effective public health communication to limit the spread of the outbreak. Physicians as "public experts" can play a crucial part in health risk communication, even if their role is challenged by transformations into the information system. Therefore, the major objective of this study was to investigate public perception of medical experts' opinions regarding the COVID-19 emergency. The Italian public debate involving medical experts in the Twitter sphere during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has particularly been examined. A content analysis was performed on 2,040 randomly selected tweets. The results of content analysis show that the medical experts who tend to mitigate the risk received a higher number of tweets supporting their positions when compared to the experts whose statements were aimed at intensifying the risk. Since a public expert is a communicator, but also an advisor who can affect how laypersons perceive and react to risk events, this study can provide more knowledge about the public perception of different communication strategies incorporated by medical experts.
Editorial: Uncertainty management during and about the COVID-19 pandemic Ilaria Riccioni, Alessia Bertolazzi, Anna Tereszkiewicz, Magdalena Szczyrbak, Ramona Bongelli Frontiers in Communication, 2024 The Covid-19 pandemic was an unexpected and destabilizing global event. The lives of millions of 17 people around the world were significantly affected from many different, often interconnected 18 perspectives, and many important changes ensued. Among the pandemic's multiple consequences 19 was the radical reshaping of social life, affecting individual, interpersonal relationships and all of our 20 daily activities and established habits. The outbreak of the pandemic and its associated effects 21 (including the virus itself, vaccines, personal protective equipment, lockdowns, social restraints, 22 vaccination passes, etc.) almost completely catalysed our attention and permeated our communicative 23 interactions (formal and informal, friendly and professional, spoken and written, face-to-face and 24 technologically mediated ones We would like to express our deep gratitude to all the authors who contributed to this Research 104 Topic, as well as to all the reviewers for their precious suggestions. A sincere acknowledgement goes 105 to the editorial staff of Frontiers in Communication for their constant and helpful support throughout 106 the process. 107
The Italian Epistemic Disclaimer Non so [I Don’t Know] in a Corpus of Gynaecological Interactions Ramona Bongelli, Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ilaria Riccioni Languages, 2023 Viewing conversations from an epistemic perspective involves analysing how participants navigate their knowledge, handle uncertainty, and address their lack of knowledge. This article focuses on the use of epistemic disclaimers, i.e., linguistic expressions that speakers employ to indicate uncertainty or lack of knowledge, in a collection of Italian gynaecological conversations throughout pregnancy. Specifically, the study examines the occurrences, features, and pragmatic functions of the epistemic disclaimers, with a specific focus on Non so, which is the Italian equivalent of “I don’t know” in English, the most extensively researched epistemic disclaimer. The study aims to (1) investigate the types and frequency of uncertain and unknowing epistemic disclaimers in the gynaecological corpus and (2) identify their characteristics and pragmatic functions. The primary findings indicate that epistemic disclaimers are primarily used to convey unknowledge rather than uncertainty. However, while patients use more epistemic disclaimers than doctors, they mainly use them to communicate unknowledge, whereas doctors mainly use them to express uncertainty. Regardless, their usage does not appear problematic in conversational terms since the topics for which they are used fall outside the domains of knowledge of each party.
Editorial: The changed life: how COVID-19 affected people's psychological well-being, feelings, thoughts, behavior, relations, language and communication Ramona Bongelli, Alessandra Fermani, Daniela Raccanello, Rob Hall, Ilaria Riccioni, Morena Muzi, Roberto Burro Frontiers in Psychology, 2023 L'etude de la pericope du double commandement de l'amour, lue en mt 22,35- 40, est organisee selon trois parties. La premiere est consacree au cadre narratif. Parler de contexte; c'est reconnaitre au texte une place dans un recit plus vaste. Dans cette perspective, l'allusion au ps 2, dans le sommaire (vv. 33-34) qui precede l'arrivee en scene du legiste, met en oeuvre trois niveaux de lecture : le monde du recit, la realite de l'auteur et l'univers symbolique. Sa fonction, la caracterisation des personnages, accentue l'enjeu du debat polemique qui suit. La question de la conception de la torah est d'abord celle de l'autorite messianique de jesus. La deuxieme partie, consacree a la formulation de la question et de la conclusion, s'est interessee a un jeu d'expressions qui montraient une affinite avec des termes et des concepts du judaisme. Leur ressemblance avec un vocabulaire technique de l'exegese juive devait aider a leur comprehension jusqu'a un certain point. L'emploi de ces termes est equivoque. Un glissement existe entre une signification conventionnelle et l'usage atteste par le premier evangile. Cette dissonance entre la presence d'un langage conventionne, caracteristiquedu parti d'opposition, et son exploitation equivoque dans la perspective d'un questionnement qui domine l'evangile, permet de mieux saisir les enjeux d'un debat qui a oppose le groupe mattheen a quelques representants du judaisme. Enfin, la troisieme partie est consacree a l'articulation des deux commandements, formalisee dans la pericope a l'aide d'un commentaire, qui fait de leur juxtaposition une paire d'elements >. Le deplacement de l'attention du premier vers le second, et la maniere dont ce glissement est justifie sont au coeur du fonctionnement de cette paire. L'analyse en a montre l'unite, fondee sur les motifs de l'imitation et de la suivance.
A corpus of scientific biomedical texts spanning over 168 years annotated for uncertainty Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation Lrec 2012, 2012
"You make me feel..": Affective causality in language communication Aisb 2008 Convention Communication Interaction and Social Intelligence Proceedings of the Aisb 2008 Symposium on Affective Language in Human and Machine, 2008
RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Rhetorical questions and epistemic stance in an Italian Facebook corpus during the COVID-19 pandemic I Riccioni, A Zuczkowski, R Bongelli Open Linguistics 11 (1), 20250068 , 2025 2025
Communicative patterns in online health communities: A comparative study of Italian and Polish R Bongelli, A Tereszkiewicz, M Paolanti, I Riccioni PLoS One 20 (9), e0333011 , 2025 2025 Citations: 2
Exploring online patient-doctor interactions. An epistemic and pragmatic analysis of Q&A patterns in an Italian “Ask to the doctor” medical forum R Bongelli, A Bertolazzi, M Paolanti, I Riccioni Patient Education and Counseling 134, 108662 , 2025 2025 Citations: 5
Are medical forums and AI-chatbots influenced by elderspeak? A comparison of how HCPs and AI-chatbots tune their responses to elderly patients’ questions R Burro, R Bongelli, A Bortolazzi, M Paolanti, I Riccioni 19th International Pragmatics Conference. The University of Queensland St … , 2025 2025
Elderspeak in Digital Health Interactions. A Comparative Analysis of Responses from Medical Professionals and AI Chatbots R Bongelli, A Bertolazzi, P Paolanti, R Burro, I Riccioni Rethinking Innovation, 1-1 , 2025 2025
Corpo, azione e riflessione: l’emozione come innesco critico nella società della ragione acrítica I Riccioni Sociologia Italiana 29, 135-146 , 2025 2025
Inside the pain that truly hurts: detecting symptoms of bullying and cyber-bullying in a comprehensive school in the Marche region (SDG 4: Quality Education) M Muzi, F Felici, R Bongelli, I Riccioni, C Aleffi, A Fermani JOURNAL OF LIFESTYLE AND SDGS REVIEW 5, 1-16 , 2025 2025
Effective communication between doctors and patients in oncological settings R Bongelli, A Bertolazzi, I Riccioni, V Quaglia, SF Bigi, G Gobber, ... 2025
Exploring epistemic management of healthcare interactions in the digital era R Bongelli, I Riccioni Patient Education and Counseling 134, 1-2 , 2025 2025 Citations: 1
‘The benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks… they say’ Italian Facebook users’ comments on the AstraZeneca vaccine suspension I Riccioni, A Bertolazzi, R Bongelli Language and Dialogue 14 (2), 297-331 , 2024 2024 Citations: 1
Health risk communication during COVID-19 emergency in Italy: The impact of medical experts’ debate on Twitter A Bertolazzi, R Bongelli, I Riccioni Health Communication 39 (8), 1616-1627 , 2024 2024 Citations: 8
Uncertainty management during and about the COVID-19 pandemic I Riccioni, A Bertolazzi, A Tereszkiewicz, M Szczyrbak, R Bongelli Frontiers in Communication 9, 1357832 , 2024 2024 Citations: 1
Auf dem Weg zu einer dialogischen Theorie der inneren Welt A Zuczkowski, I Riccioni Phänomenal – Zeitschrift für Gestalttheoretische Psychotherapie 2, 15-20 , 2024 2024 Citations: 2
Bando di Ateneo per il finanziamento di “Costellazioni Collaborative di Ricerca”(CCR)| Università di Macerata. Titolo del progetto: Thinking in Opposites to improve Creativity … I Bianchi, T Uricchio, R Bongelli, C Canestrari, I Riccioni, E Capitani, ... Università degli Studi di Macerata , 2024 2024
The changed life: how COVID-19 affected people's psychological well-being, feelings, thoughts, behavior, relations, language and communication R Bongelli, A Fermani, D Raccanello, R Hall, I Riccioni, M Muzi, R Burro Frontiers in Psychology 14, 1285573 , 2023 2023 Citations: 3
The Italian Epistemic Disclaimer Non so [I Don’t Know] in a Corpus of Gynaecological Interactions R Bongelli, A Zuczkowski, I Riccioni Languages 8 (4), 226 , 2023 2023 Citations: 5
Linguistic features and pragmatic functions of direct reported speech in Italian troubles telling sequences I Riccioni, G Philip, A Fermani, R Bongelli Language & Communication 90, 63-81 , 2023 2023 Citations: 3
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Italian epistemic marker “mi sa”[to me it knows] compared to “so”[I know],“non so”[I don’t know],“non so se”[I don’t know whether … R Bongelli, A Zuczkowski, R Burro, I Riccioni The pragmatics of the referential process and its interpretation Panel at … , 2023 2023
Italian validation of the situational brief cope scale (I-brief cope) R Bongelli, A Fermani, C Canestrari, I Riccioni, M Muzi, A Bertolazzi, ... Plos one 17 (12), e0278486 , 2022 2022 Citations: 24
The robust Italian validation of the Coping Humor Scale (RI-CHS) for adult health care workers R Burro, A Fermani, R Bongelli, I Riccioni, M Muzi, A Bertolazzi, ... International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19 (5), 2522 , 2022 2022 Citations: 7
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Coronavirus disease stress among Italian healthcare workers: The role of coping humor C Canestrari, R Bongelli, A Fermani, I Riccioni, A Bertolazzi, M Muzi, ... Frontiers in psychology 11, 601574 , 2021 2021 Citations: 91
Mitigation and epistemic positions in troubles talk: The giving advice activity in close interpersonal relationships. Some examples from Italian I Riccioni, R Bongelli, A Zuczkowski Language & Communication 39, 51-72 , 2014 2014 Citations: 53
Associations between personality traits, intolerance of uncertainty, coping strategies, and stress in Italian frontline and non-frontline HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic—a … R Bongelli, C Canestrari, A Fermani, M Muzi, I Riccioni, A Bertolazzi, ... Healthcare 9 (8), 1086 , 2021 2021 Citations: 52
Epistemic stance in dialogue A Zuczkowski, I Riccioni, R Bongelli John Benjamins Publishing Company , 2017 2017 Citations: 41
Questions and epistemic stance: Some examples from Italian conversations R Bongelli, I Riccioni, L Vincze, A Zuczkowski Ampersand 5, 29-44 , 2018 2018 Citations: 31
Italian validation of the situational brief cope scale (I-brief cope) R Bongelli, A Fermani, C Canestrari, I Riccioni, M Muzi, A Bertolazzi, ... Plos one 17 (12), e0278486 , 2022 2022 Citations: 24
Writers’ uncertainty in scientific and popular biomedical articles. A comparative analysis of the British Medical Journal and Discover Magazine R Bongelli, I Riccioni, R Burro, A Zuczkowski Plos one 14 (9), e0221933 , 2019 2019 Citations: 23
Epistemic stance A Zuczkowski, R Bongelli, L Vincze, I Riccioni The communication of certainty and uncertainty. Benjamins Dialogue Studies … , 2014 2014 Citations: 20
A Corpus of Scientific Biomedical Texts Spanning over 168 years annotated for Uncertainty R Bongelli, C Canestrari, I Riccioni, A Zuczkowski, C Buldorini, ... 2012 Citations: 20
The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty in Italian Political Media Discourses I Riccioni, R Bongelli, A Zuczkowski The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations across Cultures, 125-165 , 2013 2013 Citations: 19
“Old Wine in a New Bottle”. Depression and Romantic Relationships in Italian Emerging Adulthood: The Moderating Effect of Gender A Fermani, R Bongelli, C Canestrari, M Muzi, I Riccioni, R Burro International journal of environmental research and public health 17 (11), 4121 , 2020 2020 Citations: 18
Dubitative questions and epistemic stance I Riccioni, R Bongelli, G Philip, A Zuczkowski Lingua 207, 71-95 , 2018 2018 Citations: 18
Questions and epistemic stance in contemporary spoken British English A Zuczkowski, R Bongelli, I Riccioni, G Philip Cambridge Scholars Publishing , 2021 2021 Citations: 17
Certain-uncertain, true-false, good-evil in Italian political speeches R Bongelli, I Riccioni, A Zuczkowski International Workshop on Political Speech, 164-180 , 2010 2010 Citations: 16
Ignorance-unmasking questions in the Royal–Sarkozy presidential debate: A resource to claim epistemic authority L Vincze, R Bongelli, I Riccioni, A Zuczkowski Discourse Studies 18 (4), 430-453 , 2016 2016 Citations: 13
Communicating certainty and uncertainty in medical, supportive and scientific contexts A Zuczkowski, C Canestrari, I Riccioni, R Bongelli John Benjamins Publishing Company , 2014 2014 Citations: 13
Hypothetical questions in everyday Italian conversations. R Bongelli, I Riccioni, A Fermani, G Philip Lingua 246, 102951 , 2020 2020 Citations: 12
Self-mention and uncertain communication in the British Medical Journal (1840–2007): The decrease of subjectivity uncertainty markers I Riccioni, R Bongelli, A Zuczkowski Open Linguistics 7 (1), 739-759 , 2021 2021 Citations: 11
Negotiating narrative. Dialogic dynamics of Known, Unknown and Believed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows G Philip, R Bongelli, C Canestari, I Riccioni, A Zuczkowski Language and Dialogue 3 (1), 7-33 , 2013 2013 Citations: 11
Proposizione costitutiva di mondo e indicatori linguistici percettivi e cognitivi nella lingua italiana A Zuczkowski, R Bongelli, I Riccioni Dimensionen der Analyse von Texten und Diskursen - Dimensioni dell'analisi … , 2011 2011 Citations: 10