PHYSICIANS' BLOGS AS A HEALTH COMMUNICATION TOOL: UNDEREXPLORED ISSUE IN THE RUSSIAN-SPEAKING SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Russian health blogs remain under-explored, despite their growing popularity. Our goal is to evaluate the degree of research development regarding health blogging in Russia. We analysed and grouped key studies in the Russian language retrieved from the national scientific database eLibrary, where there are general descriptions of interactions between physicians and the internet. Some articles are dedicated to exploring personal branding in social media, while several other papers describe techniques used to communicate with the audience. The number of papers is relatively small, but the divergence of themes is rather high. The review showed that in the Russian-speaking scientific community, there is still a lack of qualitative research into the phenomenon; most articles are rather descriptive and only denote the existence of blogs as a research problem. In addition, we proposed several primary themes for further research. Results have proven that despite the high popularity of medical blogs in Russia, they are not really being studied by the scientific community.