This article is from WeChat official account:Global Media Journal (ID: GJMS2014) authors>
Summary
This study conducted a semantic network analysis of organ donation-related content on Sina Weibo in 2019, and found that discussions on this topic were dominated by hot news events. Among them, the four main topics are: the remains of negative situations and positive meanings. Donor stories, organ donation and medical progress, support for family donation, expression of donation willingness and death concept. The study also found that the current publicity of organ donation has not yet fully utilized social media; media reports have paid too much attention to individual donors and recipients are absent, which has resulted in a single dimension of Weibo discussion; some members of the public are partial or even partial. It is a wrong perception. This article believes that the popularization and publicity of social media, the multi-angle coverage of news media, and the adoption of kinship and cultural factors of communication strategies play an important role in the work of persuading organ donation.
I. Introduction
According to the registration data of the China Human Organ Donation Management Center, as of June 3, 2020, the number of registered volunteers nationwide was 2,079,369. Although this number has reached one million, in the face of China’s huge population base and the huge demand for organ transplants, my country’s organ donation rate still has a lot of room for improvement. The 2018 Chinese Medical Association Organ Transplant Annual Meeting emphasized that the supply-demand ratio of liver and kidney organs in my country is still expanding.(Shi Bingyi, 2019); According to International Organ Donation and Transplantation Registration Organization(International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation) data, in 2018, the number of (deceased donors) per million people in my country was 4.43. To one-tenth of Spain, where the donation rate is the highest; the ratio of (living donors) per million people is 1.21, in statistics Ranked fifth from the bottom of more than 70 countries and regions. In addition to meeting the needs of organ transplantation, organ donation also has basic value in medical research and medical education. For example, the autopsy of the remains of patients with new coronary pneumonia can improve the understanding of the pathogenesis of the virus and the damage to the organs by the virus, and the donated remains are also responsible. To train medical students to recognize the human body structure and simulate the role of surgery training.
Compared with other public health issues, the behavior of organ donation itself has a strong altruistic nature. This characteristic not only increases the complexity and difficulty of public persuasion, but also because of behavioral externalities, the issue needs to be considered as determinants of healthy behavior. Consider more social cognition and social norms in the theory and model. In the cultural language of China, ethics and traditional concepts make organ donation a sensitive issue. Under the concept of “happy life and evil death”, topics related to “after death” such as organ donation are difficult to enter the public discussion space. Because it is reminiscent of death, relevant publicity messages tend to make the public resist. Traditional discourses and concepts such as “parents whose body is affected by hair and skin” and “death to the whole corpse” also make the implementation and persuasion process of organ donation more difficult. In recent years, around events such as the presentation of death and hospice care in the “Human World” documentary, the stolen personal information of artist Zhang Yixing for organ donation registration and other incidents, citizens have continued to engage in dialogues about organ donation on the Weibo platform. This is the study Based on social media platforms to understand the public’s perception on this issue provides a realistic basis.
The need for organ transplantation and the need for medical research and education highlights the importance of organ donation publicity. The effectiveness of health communication activities depends to a large extent on the communicator’s understanding of the public’s background, existing cognition, and the social and psychological mechanisms related to communication. Maibach et al., 2002). Therefore, understanding the public’s awareness of organ donation in our country will help us respect the public’s attitudes and concerns in organ donation advocacy work, and find appropriate persuasive strategies on this basis to increase the willingness and promotion of organ donation. The achievement of the corresponding behavior.
In light of this, thisThe research hopes to preliminarily explore the content, dimensions and context of the discussion of organ donation topics by Weibo users. This aspect will help to understand the public’s existing awareness of organ donation topics, and further improve Effective organ donation advocacy and dissemination activities provide more targeted ideas; on the other hand, it also encourages researchers to understand the role that social media can play in promoting organ donation and even more public health issues, such as by grasping the public’s social media The platform explores the possibility of identifying potential donors around the language characteristics of organ donation. In view of the complexity, sensitivity, and externality of organ donation itself, the understanding of its social cognition, public discussion, and persuasive strategies can also help researchers in the field of health communication improve their ability to grasp similar issues. On topics that also have strong externalities and social norms, such as vaccination and environmental protection, organ donation research provides moral appeals(moral appeal)(moral appeal) and altruism (altruism) and the understanding of the persuasive effect. Since the publicity information of organ donation may activate people’s defense and resistance mentality related to “death”, and this psychological mechanism may also be produced in other publicity information that promote health changes such as tobacco control, so organ donation can also help us develop Strategies to overcome the defensive motivation of healthy communication objects against persuasive information.
II. Literature review
(1) Perception of organ donation: conclusions from questionnaire survey
Most researches on the public’s perception of organ donation come from disciplines such as public health, psychology, sociology, and communication, and most of them are in the field of public health. These studies conducted questionnaire surveys among college students, medical workers, rural residents, and the general public to understand their perceptions, attitudes, and willingness to donate organ donation.
Multiple studies have shown that the Chinese public as a whole has a positive attitude towards organ donation and has a certain willingness to donate organs. A review of questionnaire surveys before 2010 found that the proportion of respondents who favored organ donation was between 40% and 70%(Wang Li, Zhang Xiaoping, 2010). As of 2015The report shows that the proportion of respondents who are willing to donate their organs is between 9.3% and 47.7%(Fu Chengqin et al., 2016). In a survey conducted in Beijing in 2012, nearly 90% of the respondents were in favor of organ donation, and over 70% of the respondents expressed their willingness to donate organs after death.(Wang et al., 2012). A survey of the public in many regions in 2014 found that more than 60% of the respondents agreed with organ donation and 40% of the respondents were willing to donate organs after their deaths( Hu Dongmei, 2015). The questionnaire survey showed that “the majority of people approve of organ donation” and a certain willingness to donate are obviously different from the actual numbers of organ donation registration and successful donation in my country. Researchers have also noticed this difference (Yang Ying et al., 2014) and discussed the limitations of the questionnaire survey method on this issue For example, self-reports may not reflect the true willingness of organ donation, and a more structured model also excludes richer and more complex information in the public’s attitudes and thoughts towards organ donation.(Morgan et al., 2008; Fu Chengqin et al., 2016).
(2) The complexity of organ donation cognition: the influence of culture and social norms
Based on the theory of planned behavior(Theory of Planned Behavior), the social norms perceived by the individual(subjective norms) is an important factor influencing the willingness of healthy behaviors(Ajzen, 1991). A number of studies on domestic and foreign populations have proved the important influence of subjective norms on organ donation, that is, if individuals believe that other people have a positive attitude towards organ donation, they are more likely to increase their willingness to donate organs(Marshall & Feeley, 2006; Hyde & White, 2009; Shi, 2019). On the issue of organ donation, some studies have particularly emphasized the opinions of “important others” for individuals The influence of the willingness to donate organs, especially the support or opposition from family members, is an important factor in the decision to make organ donation registration (You Yanwen et al., 2009; Wang Li, Zhang Xiaoping, 2010).
On a more macro level, my country’s traditional culture and concepts are also believed to have an impact on the willingness to donate organs, but this impact may be complex and subtle. For example, in traditional Chinese culture, concepts such as “the body is skinned and the parents are affected”, “the whole body is dead”, and “the land is safe” are the reasons why people are unwilling to donate their own or their loved ones’ organs. The traditional “rebirth and death” view of death in our country also makes people keep taboo on death-related topics such as organ donation(Bo Ning, Yin Mei, 2014)(Bo Ning, Yin Mei, 2014). However, some researchers believe that the morality of morality and the promotion of the “big self” in Chinese Confucianism is the social and psychological basis for people to recognize organ donation(Yang Ying et al. , 2014).
In this cultural environment, the Chinese public has also shown a complicated attitude towards organ donation. In-depth interviews with college students showed that the interviewees showed obvious cognitive opposition and conflicts on the issue of organ donation(Pang Huimin, Zhang Qian, 2018). Some researchers have conducted content analysis of related discussions in Weibo in 2015 and found that the attitudes involved in a single Weibo may be diverse(Shi, 2017) . The sensitivity of organ donation issues in my country has also enriched the context for discussing organ donation issues. In addition to medicine, political, social, ethical, cultural, legal and other aspects may appear in the discussion of organ donation issues.
(3) Social media: as a platform for understanding public perception and health intervention
In recent years, social mediaThe booming development of the public health field provides professionals in the field of public health with a channel to implement health intervention. On the issue of organ donation, there are a number of health communication activities aimed at different groups on social media platforms overseas. These activities aim to promote the procedures and convenience of organ donation, eliminate misunderstandings about organ donation, and increase donation willingness and registration rate. For example, in 2012 Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University) researchers and Facebook (Facebook) cooperated to promote organ donation registration information and links through Facebook users’ interpersonal communication. During the 14-day event, the number of registrations across the United States increased by 6 times(Cameron, 2015). American scholars based on meta-analysis (meta-analysis) confirmed that related activities are positive in improving public attitudes towards organ donation and increasing the registration rate of organ donation And communication activities that focus on interpersonal communication channels are more effective than communication activities that rely solely on traditional media (Feeley & Moon, 2009).
Similarly, some scholars have found that the promotion of organ donation activities through social networking sites is significantly better than traditional online advertising in terms of increasing the registration rate.(Stefanone et al ., 2012). Studies have found that organ procurement organizations (organ procurement organizations) actively use YouTube to publish videos (VanderKnyff et al., 2015), the analysis of YouTube related videos also shows that a considerable proportion of the videos provide information on how to register for organ donation( Tian, 2010).
In addition to serving as a channel for promoting organ donation, social media also provides a platform for communication scholars to understand public perception, that is, to understand people’s perception of organs through the mining of social media user-generated content Awareness and attitudes about donation and organ transplantation. Data analysis of relevant content in Twitter (Twitter) shows that in the organ donation-related tweets posted by users in different regions of the United States, specific organs are mentioned Accessibility is related to the number of transplant operations performed in this region during the same period in reality, that is, social media discussions can be used as a tool to understand people’s attitudes and willingness to donate organs in real time(Pacheco et al., 2017).
In addition, an analysis of the content of Japanese tweets related to heart transplantation shows that the Japanese public’s concerns on the issue of heart transplantation mainly focus on whether the transplant recipient can properly use the funds raised for the transplant operation while accepting the transplant operation. It is also common for successful cases to post follow-up health and living conditions via Twitter (Nawa et al., 2018). In general, these studies have shown the possibility and good potential of social media platforms in understanding the public perception of organ donation, disseminating information on organ donation, and increasing the willingness to donate.
Overall, there have been many empirical studies on the topic of organ donation in the field of health communication abroad, and many of them explore the differences in the discussion of this topic among different cultural groups( Su Jing, Li Zhiyu, 2019). However, domestic research on organ donation from the perspective of health communication is still relatively limited, and most of the research objects are still on media news reports. A more unified conclusion is that the media reports on organ donation in my country are based on a positive tone. Donor stories are the main topic, and negative emotions are rarely revealed (Xie Yuli, 2016; Yang Huiyi, 2019), but the issue of organ donation on social media platforms The analysis of is still rare. From previous studies, it can be seen that social media is not only a platform for understanding society’s perceptions and attitudes towards organ donation, but also a communication channel for organ donation activities. Therefore, this study observes and analyzes the Chinese public’s concerns on this topic on social media platforms.Discuss the content and dimensions, and then understand the public’s cognition and attitude, and the potential and possibility of social media as an organ donation promotion platform.
3. Research methods
This study uses semantic network analysis(semantic network analysis) to explore Weibo users’ opinions on organ donation issues Discussion content. Semantic network analysis can be used as a theoretical framework as well as a research method (Doerfel, 1998). The principle is to explore the meaning of text based on the frequency of occurrence of words, the frequency of co-occurrence between words, and the separation distance (Danowski, 1993), and further Reveal the cognitive structure of text producers (Doerfel & Barnett, 1999). Specifically, the more certain words appear in the text or corpus formed by an issue, the stronger the connection between the word and the issue; the words expressing the same issue tend to appear in the same sentence or in the same sentence. In a passage, the semantic network based on the co-occurrence frequency of words can also analyze the corresponding situation of the issue.
The content analysis method that relies on manual coding needs to refine the coding category based on the existing knowledge of the text. Unlike the semantic network analysis, it is often exploratory.(Han Gang et al., 2017), so it is also suitable for analyzing the discussion of organ donation issues that are still in the exploratory stage. This method can not only objectively present the expression and cognition of the text producer, but also show the logic of cognition generation. It is especially suitable for social media communication situations and fragmented and decentralized user-generated content.(Gu Yu, 2019).
Currently, there have been studies in the field of journalism and communication using this method to analyze Weibo users’ discussions on privacy issues(Yuan et al., 2013). In the fields of health communication and science communication, some scholars also use this method to explore the public’s awareness of cancer (Han Gang et al., 2017), or around Vaccination(Kang et al., 2017), Nanotechnology(Veltri, 2013), gene editing(Calabrese et al., 2020), genetically modified(Ji Jiaojiao et al., 2015) and other topics of discussion and attitudes.
Considering that the relevant domestic research objects are basically concentrated on the news reports of the mass media, and there is no analysis of public discussion, this study chooses to use the semantic network analysis method to analyze the text of the organ donation topic in Sina Weibo, and publish the relevant texts by users The vocabulary and concepts in the content are nodes. Understand the association structure between these nodes (the frequency of common occurrences between concepts) to explore Weibo The content and dimensions of the dialogue on organ donation.
Specifically, this study used the asynchronous algorithm of the Scrapy framework in the Python programming language to crawl all original Weibo related to organ donation published by Sina Weibo users throughout 2019. Based on previous research (Shi & Salmon, 2018), and according to the “China Human Organ Donation Volunteer Registration Form” issued by the Chinese Red Cross Society and the Ministry of Health in the “China Human Organ Donation Volunteer Registration Form (Trial)” The options for organ donation (such as kidney, liver, heart, lung and other organs), as well as the “China Human Organ Donation Volunteer Registration Management System” are common Questions and answers (such as cornea) content, this research has set a search term list. Including “organ donation”, “donation of organs”, “donation of remains”, and “kidney donation”(dirty)“”Donate liver(dirty)“”Donate heart(dirty) “”Lung Donation(dirty)“”Pancreas donation( Dirty) “, “donate (eye) cornea” and other search terms. After the data is crawled, the deduplication process is performed, and the final result is 22064 There are two microblogs, with a text content of about 2.89 million words, and these microblogs constitute the corpus of this research.
On this basis, this research uses the jieba word segmentation tool in the R language to segment words, and some proprietary vocabularies involved in the issue of organ donation (such as “Human World”, etc.) was manually screened and sorted. On the basis of word segmentation, the Wordij3.0 software developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago(the University of Illinois at Chicago)James A. Danowski Related high-frequency words and the relationship between high-frequency words are analyzed. The software can count the frequency of words and the frequency of co-occurrence between words, and visualize the semantic network. This research mainly uses the wordlink module in the software, combined with the Chinese stop vocabulary to generate a common word matrix between the high-frequency vocabulary and high-frequency words.
four, research analysis
This research is based on Zipf(George Kingsley Zipf) the second law and Donohue(Joseph Donohue) proposed the demarcation formula for high-frequency words and low-frequency words. It is judged that the high-frequency words in this corpus should be words that appear more than 202 times, a total of 732 words. In order to pursue a better semantic network visualization effect, the top 50% high-frequency words are further selected (ie words with a frequency of more than 374 times) as keywords, and use Gephi software to visualize the co-occurrence relationship. The overall semantic network structure among high-frequency words is shown in Figure 1. The overall semantic network has an average degree of 22.652 and a density of 0.062.
Based on the overall semantic network, combined with the analysis of specific parts of speech (such as personal pronouns) and the emotional attributes of the vocabulary, the main findings are as follows .
First, the discussion on the topic of organ donation in Weibo is dominated by hot news events. This type of event is basically the donation of a body or a specific event after the donor’s illness or accidental death. News reports on organs. The independent discussion of these news events, whether it is the expression of personal donation willingness, or the description and comment on the donation registration and donation behavior of close relatives and friends, are in a relatively marginal position.
Second, one of the manifestations of news events leading the organ donation dialogue is that a large number of donor-related content emerges in the overall semantic structure, such as the name and identity of the donor(such as “Li Hongyan”, “Qiu Bicheng”, etc.) and adjectives and nouns with positive positive emotions (Such as “tribute”, “love”, “little angel”, etc.). This shows that the attitude towards organ donors in Weibo discussions is more positive. Correspondingly, the image of the “donor” is relatively vague. Combining related keywords for further analysis, we found that in the current Weibo discussion, only the “Ye Sha Team” is the only recipient with a prominent image. That is, the 16-year-old Ye Sha donated organs after the accidental death. Several of them The recipients formed a basketball team named “Yesha Team” and participated in the Chinese Women’s Basketball League (WCBA) All-Star Game. Except for the image and story of the recipient in this news, the description of the recipient in other news reports and user discussions is often blank, or replaced by a simple number, such as “Three items were saved.” “Life”, or to express the trust and expectation of the recipient from the perspective of the donor’s family, the role of the recipient is missing in the overall discussion.
Third, a large number of nouns representing kinship have emerged in high-frequency words and semantic networks, such as “parents”, “family”, “family”, “wife”, etc., which account for a total of 10% of the top 100 high-frequency keywords. This shows that relatives play a very central role in organ donation. At the same time, such relative terms are often related to some verbs, such as “donate liver”, “save”, “desire”, “wipe” and so on.
To further explore the internal structure of the issue of organ donation, the researchers used Blondel et al.( Blondel et al., 2008) developed a clustering algorithm for clustering analysis. In order to get the best results, we eliminated the central keywords “organ” and “donation” in the cluster analysis, and for some words with similar semantics (such as ” “Mother”, “Mom”, etc.) have been appropriately merged. After clustering, the overall semantic network revealed four types of topics: “Stories of dead donors with both negative situations and positive meanings”, “Organ donation and medical business”, “Family donation”, “Organ donation willingness and concept of death”, as shown in Figure 2. Show.
(1) The negative situation and positive meaning coexist in the donation story
The issues presented in the upper left corner of Figure 21 contains the most nodes, accounting for 60.88% of the overall semantic network. There are a large number of keywords that represent negative connotations, such as “car accident”, “unfortunate encounter”, “ineffective rescue”, “sudden”, “grief”, “accident”, and “suicide”. At the same time, keywords with positive and positive meanings coexist. Such as “recovering”, “hope”, “continuing”, “saving”, “doing good deeds” and so on. This type of content mainly tells the story of organ donation after the misfortune of organ donors from a micro perspective. Representative content such as: “Zhang Shu, 22 years old, a girl from Linhe, Inner Mongolia. On November 20th, her name was forever Engraved on the commemorative plaque of Baotou City’s Remains Organ Donation Memorial Park. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident and donated her kidneys and liver to bring the hope of new life to three patients.” Another example: “Ji Bilin is an Anhui Lang A veteran from Xixi died of a brainstem hemorrhage in February this year. At the end of his life, he chose to donate his organs. This gift eventually gave seven people a new life.” This also represents organ donation. The most common type in news.
Another situation in this cluster is the discussion of smoking behavior and lung donation. Key words include “lung”, “donor lung”, “give up”, “smoker”, “smoker age”, “smoker”, etc. The main content revolves around the impact of smoking on donated lungs. For example, after some smokers donated their lungs, the doctor found that the lungs were in poor condition and could not be transplanted due to smoking. A representative Weibo such as: “This donor is 52 years old and has been smoking for nearly 30 years. Observe this donor lung after obtaining it. Mild emphysema, pneumoconiosis with pulmonary bullae, tuberculosis calcification. Many smokers in our country have lungs. Doctors finally decided to abandon the use of this donor lung transplant. That is to say, you don’t even want to donate the lungs after the smoker’s brain died. The recipient wants it.” Or the smoker uses the willingness to donate his lungs after death as a motivation to quit smoking, such as: “Is it time to quit smoking? Lest the lungs cannot be donated if they die.”
(2) Organ donation placed in the framework of medical career
The second category of issues occupies 24.15% of the overall network, as shown in the cluster in the upper right corner of Figure 2. Key words include “remains”, “doctor”, “death”, “China”, “tribute”, “hospital”, “organ transplantation” and so on. Although this clustering mainly revolves around the personal stories of organ donors, these individuals have special professional identities (doctors) and donations Purpose (for medical research), so the context of discussion is mostly a broader picture of medical career. The three core donors in this type of content are Xia Suisheng, Lin Gan, and Qiu Bicheng. Among them, Xia Suisheng is known as my country’s organ transplant business.One of the pioneers, Lin Gan and Qiu Bicheng were also veterinarians and orthopedic surgeons respectively during their lifetimes. Representative content such as: “On December 8, Qiu Bicheng passed away due to illness at the age of 42. At the end of his life, he signed a voluntary donation. The body book and donation of the cornea. After the farewell ceremony, his body will be transported to Fujian Medical University to provide students with anatomy class. Repost and pay tribute!” Or such as: “Recently, one of the pioneers of organ transplantation in China, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Professor Xia Suisheng of Tongji Hospital passed away at the age of 95. His family complied with Xia Lao’s last wishes to donate his cornea, and also donated 1 million yuan for medical research on his behalf. After decades of medical experience, he used 130 animal experiments to open up the cause of organ transplantation in China. Gate; train organ transplant talents; establish an organ transplant system with citizen donations as the sole source… Salute, farewell!”
In the first category of issues, the positive significance of organ donation is usually described as “saving lives”, while the motivation for donation in this issue is more focused on “returning the country and society” and “promoting medical progress.” “For example, there is a Weibo text mentioning Professor Lin Gan’s thoughts: “Now donate yourself, whether it is organs or remains, hoping to be useful to the country and society.” At the same time, there are more discussions in this type of discussion. The focus is less on negative situations, and more is to describe the impact and significance of the donor and the donation itself on medical research and medical careers. Therefore, in addition to medical and hospital-related vocabulary (such as “hospital”, “doctor”, “anatomy”, etc.), the relevant discussion also includes some Such as “return”, “country”, “career”, “public welfare”, “contribution” and other more macro concepts.
(3) Social attention caused by family donations
The third category of issues occupies 12.59% of the overall network, as shown in the cluster in the lower right corner of Figure 2. Key words include “father”, “mother”, “son”, “liver donation”, “daughter”, “donation”, “save”, etc. The discussion mainly revolves around living donation between relatives. This topic contains some keywords containing positive emotions such as “brave”, “success”, “warm”, etc. It focuses on praising the moral character of the donor and the family relationship between the donor and the recipient, such as: “filial piety and courage” ! The girl born in the ’00’ season donated liver to save her father.” “The touching story of a pair of’post-90s’ sisters in Nanning competing to donate livers to save their mothers suffering from liver cancer has blown up the WeChat circle of friends. The sisters’ filial piety. , Leaving a warm footnote for Guangxi’s first adult parental liver transplantation.” In addition, this cluster also includes the fundraising activities for this type of transplantation posted by Weibo users on social media platforms, such as: “ # Son Suffering from liver cirrhosis, mother wants to donate the liver to save the child# The dripping water turns into an ocean, I am in the “Brave mother donate liver to save the child” itemProject donation is successful!” reflects the role and value of social media in public welfare communication.
In addition, according to the classification of dead body donation and living body donation, the first two types of topics all revolve around dead body donation, accounting for more than 80% of the overall network, and there are relatively few discussions on the child topic family and living body donation.
(4) The willingness to donate organs as a symbol of “non-reincarnation”
The fourth category of topics is the smallest in size, accounting for only 2.38% of the entire network. It mainly expresses the willingness of some users to donate organs and the concept of death. These users are mainly ordinary users, with little participation from big V and media organizations. The main keywords include “ashes”, “remaining”, “human world”, “go home”, “sea”, etc. The content is also relatively concentrated, that is, to express one’s willingness to donate after death, but at the same time, it is also believed that organ donation can prevent “entry”. The way of reincarnation symbolizes “freedom” and “complete liberation”. Representative content such as: “After death, all organs will be donated, and all the remaining ashes will be burned. I am tired of this world if I don’t go home or go to the grave or reincarnate.” Or: “After death, I hope I can donate the organs. All donated…I wish to be truly free after death.”
In this part of the content, the issue of organ donation is placed in the expression context of some publishers’ negative attitudes and negative feelings about life. At the same time, organ donation is also used as a symbol to express the individual’s desire to “free” and “world-weary”. It can be regarded as a special recognition of organ donation in traditional Chinese culture.
V. Discussion
This study analyzed the discussion texts on the topic of organ donation on Sina Weibo in 2019. In summary, the discussion on the topic of organ donation is dominated by hot news events in the Weibo public opinion field, and the content of the public’s dialogue is mainly focused on “Donor stories with both negative context and positive significance”, “organ donation and medical career development”, “support for family donation”, and “the expression of donation willingness and death concept”. Compared with other public health issues, organ donation behavior has a strong altruistic nature, and because my country’s culture and traditional concepts are secretive about death expression, organ donation is sensitive and complicated in persuasion. Therefore, this research provides ideas for more targeted publicity and promotion activities based on the public’s cognition and expression characteristics of this topic, and hopes to enhance the ability to grasp and guide similar topics. Discussions surrounding the research findings mainly include the following points.
(1) Social mediaThe discourse power of Chinese users needs to be tapped
The power of discourse from user interaction in social media has not been paid attention to in this topic. Professional institutions or organizations have insufficient use of social media, and organ donation promotion work lacks effective science and multiple discussion dimensions. This is reflected in the following two aspects: First, in the sample of this study, professionals and medical institutions are more marginal in the medical and legal science content of transplantation technology, donation process and regulations, and are in the overall semantic network. Most of the vocabulary describing the unfortunate encounters of the donors in the section, while the medical professional vocabulary and legal and regulatory vocabulary are relatively few, and most of the medical vocabulary refers to the negative events encountered by the donor(such as cancer, uremia, cerebral hemorrhage, liver cirrhosis) is not an introduction to the technology and process of organ transplantation; secondly, there is less organ donation advocacy work carried out by actively using social media. For example, on my country’s “Organ Donation Day” (June 11), there are only “Shenzhen Health Commission” and “Yangshan Release”. Very few official Weibo accounts have released relevant promotional content. Judging from the sample size of the day, the amount of discussion on this topic has not increased significantly.
Corresponding to the lack of publicity and science popularization, some members of the public do not know much about the issue of organ donation, and they have one-sided or even wrong perceptions. Most of the public’s understanding of organ donation stays at the rough concepts of “helping others” and “no reincarnation, complete liberation after death”, and lack of understanding of relevant medical knowledge, donation regulations and procedures. For example, Alipay has opened the channel and portal for organ donation registration since the end of 2016, but among the samples covered in this study for the whole year of 2019, only more than ten Weibo mentioned the use of Alipay platform for organ donation. The expression also reflected the idea of ”I don’t know how to register” or “Worried about the cumbersome registration process.” In addition, some microblogs also showed misunderstandings about the organ donation system, process and distribution methods in my country. For example, many microblogs involved the concept of “designated recipients of post-mortem organs” and “organ donations can be sold for money”. There is still a lot of room for improvement in popular science. Furthermore, due to the symbolic cognition that organ donation stays on the surface, some Weibo also has content that puts “organ donation” as a curse, such as “eyes don’t need to donate the cornea quickly to make a contribution, okay?” “Then you can die? If you die, you can donate organs to save more people” and so on.
Although the public’s perception fully recognizes the “helping others” aspect of organ donation, there are also many news reports of individual stories in Weibo discussions, but due to the lack of multi-angle and in-depth dialogueThe popularization of science on transplantation technology, donation process, laws and regulations is not enough to make this kind of “altruistic” cognition have a wide impact through public discussion, and then it can be transformed into donation registration at the behavioral level. Organ donation decision-making is a complicated and difficult process, so just knowing its “helping” side is not enough to lead to donation behavior. User discussions from social media will not only play a role in the change of individual attitudes, but may also promote changes in social norms at the macro level, thereby activating the normative influence of healthy behaviors. Existing studies have shown that it is difficult to change the public’s organ donation behavior only through news reports, and interpersonal communication has a better effect in increasing the registration rate of organ donation( Feeley & Moon, 2009; Pang Huimin, Zhang Qian, 2018). As an interpersonal communication platform and public discussion space, social media is worthy of being fully and effectively used by medical workers and related institutions in the promotion and popularization of this topic. These popular science content and the resulting social discussions will form a communication loop. , To bridge the gap between the “most public support for organ donation” mentioned in the previous article and the inadequate registration rate and number of donations in reality.
(2) Shaping the role of “donor” helps to alleviate resistance
Combined with previous analysis of the content of news reports, this article believes that the reporting mode of media organizations has affected the public’s discussion of organ donation to a certain extent, and may cause the public’s one-sided perception and negative attitude on this issue. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: the prominent negative situation and the lack of the recipient’s image.
Research on news reports found that the topic of organ donation presented by the media in my country is dominated by individual stories(Xie Yuli, 2016; Yang Huiyi, 2019). This study further found that most of these stories are based on accidental or sudden illness deaths as the background of donation. This has caused the topic of organ donation to be often placed in such negative situations and accompanied by more negative emotional words, such as “car accident” and “suicide”. “Unfortunate”, “sudden”, “grief” and so on. In previous content analysis of media reports, researchers often set reports on illegal organ transplants or convey negative attitudes towards organ donation as “negative” tendencies. Although the frequent appearance of negative emotional vocabulary in Weibo is not equivalent to the expression of negative attitudes towards organ donation, the negative situations they create are still likely to cause the public to stereotype the issue of organ donation. When the public talks about the issue of organ donation, this association of negative situations may make them feel resistant. In fact, the samples in this study did appear when users expressedWhen giving a willingness to donate, because of “thinking of death”, a mentality of fear or hesitation arises.
The characters in the story of organ donation and the lack of descriptions of organ recipients in Chinese news reports(Xie Yuli, 2016; Yang Huiyi, 2019)(Xie Yuli, 2016; Yang Huiyi, 2019)Unanimously, the “donor” is also absent in the public discussion on Weibo. According to the China Human Organ Donation Management Center, my country practices the “double-blind principle” in organ donation, that is, unless the donor’s family or recipient needs it or for publicity purposes, the donor and recipient generally do not know each other’s identities. From the perspective of news production, this regulation partly explains why unilateral donor images are the mainstay in current media reports. It also shows that Chinese media are more passive in following organ donation-related issues when reporting on organ donation issues. Hot news events, and the lack of active excavation and follow-up on the stories of waiting organ transplant recipients and recipients, let alone active agenda setting and popular science on the topic of organ donation. The lack of the recipient’s voice limits the possibility of extended discussions on the topic of organ donation.
Foreign studies have found that about a quarter of newspaper reports on organ donation are related to the health status of living donors after transplantation or the health and living conditions of the recipients. There is also a certain percentage in the TV news about waiting The individual experience of organ transplantation is presented, and these contents may provide positive information for potential donors(Feeley & Vincent, 2007; Quick et al., 2009)(Feeley & Vincent, 2007; Quick et al., 2009)< /span>. The mining of Japanese tweets related to heart transplantation also showed that the recipient’s subsequent health status and personal life content via Twitter contained the most positive emotions in all conversations. From the perspective of health communication, the follow-up expression of the recipient’s health and life stories can not only broaden the discussion space for this topic, but also present the most intuitive and iconic way to present the positive results of the “altruistic” behavior of organ donation. Help increase the public’s willingness to register.
(3) The particularity of kinship and cultural context in organ donation
The special role of kinship and cultural factors in the issue of organ donation in China deserves attention. A large number of keywords representing kinship appeared in the organ donation dialogue on the Weibo platform, such as “parents” (including “father”, “mother”, “dad”, etc.)< /span>, “child” (including “son”, “daughter”, etc.). Through further examination of such content, the author found that the final decision of some organ donation is made by the donor’s relatives, and the donor’s personal will cannot be reflected. This kind of content reflects the current situation of domestic organ donation-most of our country’s current organ donation is done after a death case occurs, and doctors negotiate and persuade family members to donate( Bao Yumeng, Yao Xiaolan, 2016). In the process of negotiation and persuasion, multiple relatives of the donor are often involved, and any question or opposition of any one of them may affect the final donation decision(Wu Youmin, Zhu Jiye, 2011). This complex persuasion process is between the strict “warm ischemia time” (from the donor’s stop of blood supply to the beginning of preservation with the preservation solution after the organ is removed) for organ transplantation. If the persuasion strategy for relatives can be developed under the restrictions of , it will not only increase the success rate of organ donation, but also reduce organ damage during the transplantation process.
Overseas research believes that describing the donor as a “savior” or “hero” and emphasizing the benefit of donation itself for coping with sadness is a strategy to persuade the relatives of the deceased to agree to donate(Anker & Feeley, 2011). This study found that in addition to the recognition of “saving/helping others”, organ donation decision-making also reflects the concept of people’s hope that people’s lives will be extended by organ donation from the perspective of kinship in the Chinese cultural context. Compared with the personal donation decision to help others’ will, the donation motivation of kinship becomes complicated and subtle under this kind of discourse. For example, in the research sample, family members of donors express gratitude and expectation to the recipients (not the other way around)———thanks to the recipients for continuing their relatives “Living for him”, hope the recipient “see the world for the child”, etc. The continuation of kinship can dispel people’s obsession with “there is a dead body” to a certain extent, making kinship donation motivation an effective way to persuade donation.
Therefore, when designing publicity activities in the future, should give full attention to the social relationships of potential donors, and stimulate family dialogues and broader public discussions on the topic of organ donation. For example, in an organ donation publicity campaign carried out by the German Health Education Center (Federal Centre for Health Education) in 2013, “family responsibility “Determined as a means of appeal, that is, by highlighting the difficulties and pressures of the deceased’s relatives in making decisions at the painful moment of losing their loved ones, so as to prompt individuals who are currently willing to donate organs to make clear decisions and fully communicate and discuss with their relatives(Hansen et al., 2018). At the same time, this research also found that some users will not only express their willingness to donate in Weibo, but also emphasize the hope that “friends who see this Weibo” will fulfill this willingness for themselves after encountering unexpected events. These contents It provides good corpus and materials for future communication activities based on user-generated content.
It is true that organ donation is not a hot public health issue, but this article believes that the altruism and sensitivity of organ donation make it more special and more difficult to promote. In fact, organ donation can often yield positive social significance and rich medical research results. This research attempts to depict the public’s perception of the issue of organ donation, calling for attention to the power of user discourse in social media, enriching the reporting dimension, and taking cultural context and kinship perspectives as the starting point for thinking. It is useful for professional institutions and related workers. Carry out practical work in a targeted manner to provide more reference ideas and executable paths. There are still some shortcomings in this research, such as failure to completely eliminate irrelevant blog posts in the crawled samples, failure to separate institutional accounts from personal accounts in this research, insufficient in-depth analysis of ordinary users, and poor understanding of the public. The research lacks diachronic observations, etc. These deficiencies are worthy of continued consideration and discussion in follow-up research.
This article is a phased achievement of the special fund for basic scientific research operations of central universities (project number: SKZZY2015021); Central University of Finance and Economics scientific research and innovation team support plan.
The references in this article are omitted. For the full version, please refer to the original text of the publication, which was published in the 4th issue of the Journal of Global Media in 2020.
This article is from WeChat official account:Global Media StudiesJournal (ID: GJMS2014) , Author: Pan Jiabao (Central University of Finance Cultural Institute and media lecturer), Xu Zhi (Minzu University of Journalism and Communication Lecturer), Wei Chao (Master of Journalism and Communication, Minzu University of China)