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Representing cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health
Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China. (MidWorld)ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8481-1297
Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1855-4258
2023 (English)In: Visual Communication, ISSN 1470-3572, E-ISSN 1741-3214, Vol. 22, no 3, p. 469-487Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article analyses an award-winning film produced as part of the Chinese government's 'Healthy China Initiative' to increase awareness of cervical cancer among young women. The film was designed to be social media friendly, using a more accessible popular style, and it achieved over 350 million views on Chinese social media. The aim had been to shift away from a tradition of more formal, authoritative public information content. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis in the broader tradition of critical health communication studies, the findings support other critics of Chinese public health information in relation to women's reproductive health. Despite the accessible style, the authors find a highly conservative ideology of womanhood, where the actual nature of cervical cancer, caused by the very common Human Papillomavirus, is obscured in a highly moralized message about sexual abstinence. The film also represents a view of Chinese health services that glosses the difficulty of access for many, as well as public concerns about corruption and clientelism.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2023. Vol. 22, no 3, p. 469-487
Keywords [en]
cervical cancer, China, critical discourse analysis, health communication, Human Papillomavirus, multimodality, reproductive health, social media, STDs, womanhood
National Category
Other Humanities
Research subject
Rhetoric
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-112120DOI: 10.1177/14703572231170343ISI: 001037136800001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85166005691OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-112120DiVA, id: diva2:1842651
Available from: 2024-03-05 Created: 2024-03-05 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

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Zhao, Wenting

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