Reporting doctor-patient relationship issues in China: media representation, public perception, and reporter engagement

Doctor-patient relationship issues are one of the most important topics in public health. Since the establishment of the country, China’s healthcare reforms have shaped the doctor-patient relationship deeply. In recent years, the frequent doctor-patient conflicts in China have attracted the attention from mainstream news media and citizen journalists. These reports have also aroused intense discussions among the public. This project which investigates the above-mentioned reporting and discussions falls broadly into the field of public communication, exploring the interaction of media reports and the doctor-patient relationship.

This study uses content analysis, corpus linguistics analysis, semi-structured interviews, and focus group interviews to explore the media reporting characteristics (mainstream news media and citizen journalism) of doctor-patient conflicts. It investigates how doctors and patients, as the core audiences, interpret citizen journalism. It also discusses the multiple roles of citizen journalists and how their work contributes to the construction of the doctor-patient relationship in China.

This research points out that media reporting on doctor-patient conflicts are shaped by social ecology, political systems, and economic patterns. Mainstream news media and citizen journalism have different emphases when reporting on doctor-patient conflicts. Core audiences from different social and cultural backgrounds have diverse understandings and interpretations of these citizen journalist reports. The efforts of citizen journalists have exposed and challenged the shortcomings in the existing doctor-patient relationship, but their reporting activities also face uncertain challenges and limitations. This research proposes a perspective to explore public health issues from the three dimensions - communicator, communication content, and audience. Findings from this research supported by recent empirical data from the above three dimensions, contribute to the discussion of how media shapes the doctor-patient relationship in China. As a whole, this study contributes to citizen journalism research in the Chinese context.