
Dr Roberta Bernardi
BSc, PhD
Current positions
Associate Professor in Digital Health and Innovation
School of Management - Business School
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
- Digital innovation in healthcare
- Social media, online communities, and public perception of medical expertise and advice
- Online discourse, societal change, and innovation
- Digital technologies and the transformation of professional identities and practice
- Sociomateriality and affordances
Personal profile
I am Associate Professor in Digital Health and Innovation at the University of Bristol. I earned my PhD from the University of Warwick in 2012 and have more than 10 years of experience researching digital innovation in healthcare.
I have done research on the adoption of health information systems and telehealth from various theoretical perspectives, including institutional theory, affordances, identity theory, and the sociology of professions.
My recent work focuses on the impact of online health communities and social media on medical expertise and healthcare innovation. I am an experienced qualitative researcher and am currently working on combining text analytics with human interpretations of texts to advance the analytical as well as interpretative power of narrative methodologies in the analysis of social media conversations.
My research features in world leading journals such as Management Information Systems Quarterly, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, and Social Science & Medicine.
I am an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems and the Information Systems Journal, and a member of the Editorial Board of Information Systems Research.
As a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), I have made notable contributions to teaching. A firm believer in the power of information technologies and data in addressing industry and societal challenges, I have designed and led courses on digital innovation, data analytics, and Artificial Intelligence for business where students have been involved in group and individual projects to solve real business scenario challenges and problems.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
“Medfluencer: a socio-semantic network analysis method to investigate how medical influencers affect health discourse on social media
Principal Investigator
Description
BERTopic captures deeper text meanings, essential for understanding conversation context and providing clear topics, especially in short texts like social media posts
Mapping actors' multiple identities (e.g., occupations) reveals their…Managing organisational unit
School of Management - Business SchoolDates
20/11/2023 to 31/07/2024
Medical Experts as Social Media Influencers of Networks of Practice in the Fight Against COVID-19
Principal Investigator
Description
Medical experts who act as influencers on social media have the power to influence public trust in public health guidance. Despite their influence, the role of medical experts in shaping…Managing organisational unit
School of Management - Business SchoolDates
31/01/2022 to 04/07/2022
Epistemic responsibility and the sociomateriality of epistemic practices in a diabetes online community
Principal Investigator
Description
Online health communities provide health information and peer-support to people with a chronic illness and compensate for the lack of personalised care in the health service. Yet, when it is…Managing organisational unit
School of Management - Business SchoolDates
01/04/2019 to 31/03/2020
The Role of Online Health Communities in Patient Empowerment An Empirical Study of Knowledge Creation and Sharing on Diabetes.co.uk
Principal Investigator
Description
Findings demonstrate that the forum can have a positive impact on its members’ wellbeing and can help members manage their relationship with healthcare professionals. The survey results show the key…Managing organisational unit
School of Management - Business SchoolDates
17/04/2017 to 15/09/2017
Integrated Care Team: Independent evaluation of the North East Hampshire and Farnham Vanguard by Wessex Academic Health Science Network
Role
Researcher
Managing organisational unit
School of Management - Business SchoolDates
03/10/2016 to 24/11/2016
Publications
Selected publications
01/05/2020Clinical managers' identity at the crossroad of multiple institutional logics in IT innovation
Information Systems Journal
The Role of Affordances in the Deinstitutionalization of a Dysfunctional Health Management Information System in Kenya
MIS Quarterly
Health Information Systems and Accountability in Kenya
Journal of the Association for Information Systems
Challenging Dominant Frames in Policies for IS Innovation in Healthcare through Rhetorical Strategies
Journal of the Association for Information Systems
How Do Online Communities of Patients Aggregate on Twitter? An Affordance Perspective
Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh International Conference on Information Systems: 2016
Recent publications
05/07/2024Changing people’s views about veganism and climate change
PACIS 2024 Proceedings
Achieving sustainability using Digital Sharing Platforms
Medfluencer
How do unintended consequences emerge from EHR implementation? An affordance perspective
Information Systems Journal
Turning Digital in Times of Crisis
Information and Management