Medical experts as health knowledge providers

Abstract

The rise of wemedia in China has brought challenges to public health communication(PHC), such as the change in doctor-patient relations and the vulnerabilityof trust. As few researchers have touched upon the issue of identity constructionduring PHC in Weibo, this study aims to fill this gap and investigate one health informationprovider's discursive construction of multiple identities in Weibo and itspragmatic effect on trust building. Through this study the author attempts to contributeto the existing scholarship on the dynamics of identity-relation constructionin wemedia and the pragmatic construction of trustworthiness in a PHC context.