The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-Funders: Help-Seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowd-Funding Discourses

ABSTRACT

Ineffective identity construction of crowd-funders for medical events is a major factor blocking donations from arriving in time to help patients in need. There is a dearth of report on the discursive veins of identity construction in a web-based crowd-funding scenario in Eastern setting, such as in China. This is the first Chinese study aimed to discursively observe, analyze and evaluate identity construction of crowd-funders in online fundraising setting. Content and discourse analyses were employed, with focus on linguistic and interactional dimensions of 500 pieces of online fundraisers’ personal statements (collected from https://www.qschou.com). Findings indicate that three different types of fundraisers’ identities (as a family member/ a patient/ the disadvantaged) were constructed through discursive strategies oriented toward ethos, expertise and emotion respectively. The findings are conducive to offering online help-seekers an array of identity-motivated discursive strategies to make more prospective backers engage in a medical donative event. Results highlight that crowd-funders need support and training to obtain the expected amount of donation, focusing on enhancing the rhetoric toward sincerity, honesty and morality.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council [202006190106]; Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province [KYCX20_0015].