COVID-19 online medical consultation in China: A discourse analysis perspective

During the outbreak of COVID-19, many online medical consultation (OMC) platforms in China set up a section for the public to consult with doctors about COVID-19 disease. The COVID-19 related medical consultation discourse is extremely understudied. From a discourse analysis perspective, this paper examines the COVID-19 OMC texts which were collected from widely used Chinese e-healthcare Apps. Adopting content analysis and sequence analysis, the current paper addresses three questions: (1) what are thematic features of the COVID-19 OMC inquirers’ messages; (2) what are thematic features of the doctors’ messages, and (3) what are the sequential features of the inquirer-doctor interaction. Findings of this study can facilitate a better understanding of COVID-19 OMC discourse and provide implications regarding public health communication and popularization of science in relation to emerging infectious disease.