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Traditional Chinese medicine works: A politicised scientific debate in the COVID-19 pandemic

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Altman PengORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic provoked public attention to medical treatments across the world. In China, a debate on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) took place amid the government’s active promotion of it for COVID-19 patients. Rather than addressing such a debate from the perspective of medical science or health communication, this paper explores how TCM was politicised on Chinese social media. The research is based on a case study, collecting data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site – Zhihu. By triangulating content analysis (CA) and thematic analysis (TA), we reveal how nationalist sentiments and dissenting opinions are expressed through approval or criticism of TCM among the Zhihu community. The research findings uncover the political momentum behind the debate by shedding light on how Zhihu users engage with public affairs through medical commentaries. This paper thus contributes to understanding the politicised discourse of TCM in China in the wake of the global pandemic.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Peng AY, Chen S

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Asian Journal of Communication

Year: 2021

Volume: 31

Issue: 5

Pages: 421-435

Online publication date: 28/04/2021

Acceptance date: 02/04/2021

Date deposited: 29/04/2021

ISSN (print): 0129-2986

ISSN (electronic): 1742-0911

Publisher: Routledge

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2021.1913618

DOI: 10.1080/01292986.2021.1913618

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