Children's Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China - A Culture of Anxiety?

This book analyses parental anxieties about their children's healthcare issues in urban China, engaging with wider theoretical debates about modernity, risk and anxiety. It examines the broader social, cultural and historical contexts of parental anxiety by analysing a series of socio-economic changes and population policy changes in post-reform China that contextualise parental experiences. Drawing on Wilkinson's (2001) conceptualisation linking individual's risk consciousness to anxiety, this book analyses the situated risk experiences of parents' and grandparents', looking particularly into their engagement with various types of media. It studies the representations of health issues and health-related risks in a parenting magazine, popular newspapers, commercial advertising and new media, as well as parents' and grandparents' engagement with and response to these media representations. By investigating 'a culture of anxiety' among parents and grandparents in contemporary China, thisbook seeks to add to the scholarship of contemporary parenthood in a non- Western context. 

List of contents

Introduction.- 1.Risk and children's healthcare in modern China.- 2.Contextualising parental experiences in post-reform China.- 3.Feeding fears: News coverage of the infant formula scandal and health risk communication.- 4.Mediating nature, risk and scientific protection: Advertising discourse of healthcare products and parental reception.- 5.Managing anxiety: Parental engagement with new media and civic participation.- Conclusion: A culture of anxiety? 

About the author

Qian (Sarah) Gong is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, UK. Her recent research interests include health communication, risk, parenting and motherhood. She is currently the Principal investigator of a Wellcome Trust funded project Health communication for Chinese migrant mothers in Northern England.

Product details

• Authors: Qian Gong
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.03.2019
• EAN: 9781349698288
• ISBN: 978-1-349-69828-8
• No. of pages: 214
• Dimensions: 149 mm x 12 mm x 214 mm
• Weight: 301 g
• Illustrations: VI, 214 p. 7 illus.
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Communication science; B, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication, Personal & public health, Media and Communication, Communication Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Youth Culture, Age groups: adolescents, Youth—Social life and customs, Asian Culture, Ethnology—Asia, Media and Communication Theory, Maternal and child health services, Maternal and Child Health, Materno-fetal medicine