Patient (Mis)understanding of Prescription Drug Ads in Social Media: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of eDTCA

This chapter is positioned on the divide between proponents and opponents of electronic direct-to-consumer advertising (eDTCA) with the broad purpose of investigating how this kind of multimodal communication can contribute to patients’ understanding, or perhaps, misunderstanding of the risks and benefits of prescription drugs. The investigation is particularly conducted on eDTCA, which is delivered through the popular social medium of YouTube as a current practice performed by several pharmaceutical companies.The study focuses on the interplay between different semiotic systems, and the extent to which these may mislead patients’ understanding of eDTCA messages.