When Epidemic Outbreaks Meet Social Media
Collective Illness Narratives on WeChat During Covid-19 Omicron Infection in China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21617255 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bolin Cao (0000-0001-8743-1361, Shenzhen University, corresponding author), Lei Wang (0000-0001-5326-565X, State Key Lab Media Convergence of Media Convergence and Communication, Internet Information Research Institution, Communication University of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 2211-2224 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1041-0236 • E-ISSN: 1532-7027 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10410236.2023.2259695 |
| PMID | 37731170 |
| OpenAlex | W4386910448 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 49 |
This study investigates the landscape of collective illness narratives on social media in China during December 2022 and January 2023, when nearly one billion people were infected with the COVID-19 Omicron virus. By analyzing 655 private social media posts, conducting in-depth interviews with 50 individuals, and organizing 6 focus group discussions with 24 participants, this study explores how COVID-19 Omicron infection became normalized and widely discussed on private social media platforms, notably WeChat Moments. This study unveils distinct features that arise when illness narratives and social media intersect and reveals how people exercised moral imagination and depathologized perception in social media illness narratives. The article provides narrative dynamics during the pandemic in a collective manner and sheds light on the reshaping of illness narratives in the era of social media, offering insights for future pandemic responses
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · China · Disease · Linguistics · Narrative · Outbreak · Pandemic · Political science · Social distance · Social media · History · Medicine · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Social Media in Health Education · Virology
Medicalization
Putting Their Best Foot Forward
Framing Covid-19
How the public uses social media wechat to obtain health information in china
Embodied Metaphor In Women's Narratives About Their Experiences With Cancer
Communicating health crisis
Computer-Mediated Communication
Narrative Sense-Making During Covid-19
‘It’s Nothing Like Cancer’
“Do You Know How Much I Suffer?”
Experiencing the Pandemic
Social Support and Connective Affordances
How people with dementia use twitter
“Only visible for three days”
Support amid uncertainty
Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics
Living With Cancer
Covid-19 in English and Persian
War metaphors in public discourse
Illness Narratives and Facebook
Memes in Digital Culture
Is Death Taboo for Older Chinese Immigrants
China’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Making the Invisible Visible ’
The thing about pain
Ecological perspectives in health research
Long Covid - The illness narratives
Illness narratives
There Is No "I" in Network
The Social Construction of Illness
Illness narratives
Illness and narrative
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |