title: Taking responsibility for your own health
title: understanding Chinese health television
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Zhu, Ge
Publisher: name: University of Iowa
Year: 2022
Subjects: Cultivation
Health communication
Traditional Chinese Medicine
public abstract
China
Television

description: With the advent of an aging society and an increase in the number of chronic diseases, China has switched its focus on promoting prevention when deepening health reform. The Chinese government has mobilized media resources, such as broadcast television, to encourage more individual responsibility for health. Integrated attribution, cultivation, and social cognitive theories, the dissertation explores how Chinese television cultivates the belief of personal responsibility for health and shapes preventive health behaviors that center on traditional medicine and self-care among viewers.
description: An explanatory sequential mixed-method approach was employed to explore and understand Chinese health television programs. Results of the quantitative content analysis showed that television focuses on individual and behavioral factors in explaining the causes of health problems and places most of the problem-solving responsibility on behavior change, while neglecting social and environmental factors that can have a fundamental impact on health status. The textual analysis revealed an asymmetry in cross-referencing between TCM and WM on the screen: Western medical knowledge was frequently cited by TCM experts, but TCM rarely appeared in WM narratives. In addition, the thematic analysis shows that cultural values are deeply embedded in the health discourse about TCM, and life-nurturing practice has been connected to Chinese cultural virtues such as self-regulation, self-cultivation, and filial piety.
description: A survey was conducted to explore the association between viewing health TV programs and health-related beliefs, and to investigate cultural, psychosocial, and sociodemographic factors that contribute to Chinese viewers’ preventive health behaviors. Results demonstrate that compared to light viewers, heavy viewers have more positive attitudes toward TCM and Integrative Medicine, agree more with the cultural values associated with TCM, and are more likely to believe life-nurturing practices will produce good health. Findings reveal that individual responsibility for health is internalized through television cultivation as a normative belief about health. This normative belief, along with self-efficacy, ancient healing tradition, cultural adherence, and environmental facilitators, contributed to the popular preventive health behaviors centered on life-nurturing and self-care in contemporary China.
description: This study suggests the huge capacity of mass media in constructing the social understanding of health and illness, fostering cultural deliberation of ancient medical practices and self-care, shaping the mindset of health promotion, and fostering preventive health behaviors among the public. While most of the existing literature in this area focuses on examining the cultivating effect of media on a specific health issue, this study reveals how the general health promotion mindsets and preventive health behaviors are shaped by the multifaceted influences of media, culture, and psychosocial determinants. This study also reveals the tension and common ground between the most dominant biomedical model of health and the rising alternative and complementary medicine, which furthers our understanding of the growing global uptake of integrative medicine.