Breaking Taboos in Women’s Reproductive Health: The Communication Strategies Used by Top OB/GYN Influencers in Chinese Social Media

ABSTRACT

Numerous women struggling with health issues dare not go to the hospital due to the stigmatization of obstetric and gynecological diseases in traditional Chinese culture. Social media provide a platform for women to access health information from experts easily. Guided by the doctor-patient communication model, attribution theory, and destigmatization framework, we sought to understand the topics/diseases covered by top OB/GYN influencers on Weibo and the prevalent functions, language style, responsibility attribution, and destigmatization cues used by them. We also examined how these communication strategies predicted followers’ engagement behavior. The results showed that women’s childbirth-related issues received the highest exposure in the leading OB/GYN influencers’ Weibo posts. Influencers’ emphasis on building psychological connectedness with their followers was exhibited in the following communication strategies: avoiding using complex medical terminology, drawing equivalences between the outgroup and ingroup, and providing health information. However, using everyday language, responding to emotions, and removing blame served as the three most influential predictors of followers’ engagement. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.