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A tale of tradition and modernization

The conceived self-identities by TCM doctors in the Digital Health Era

ORCiD logo with link | Harbin Engineering UniversityChina
ORCiD logo with link | Central University of Finance and EconomicsChina
Published online: 2 June 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.23061.mao
Abstract
This paper aims to examine the conceived self-identities by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctors in the digitalized scenarios of healthcare. With the textual posts collected from Sina Microblog, this study systematically analyzed 474 pieces of narrative posts (97,737 Chinese characters) of TCM doctors who were officially registered on Sina Microblog. Results indicate that TCM doctors normally envisaged three types of self-identities on Sina Microblog: modern professionals, tradition defenders, and cultural inheritors. Specifically, solution-oriented, emotion-oriented, and legitimation-oriented strategies were discursively adopted by some TCM doctors to express their acceptance of digitalization, whereas various linguistic devices were employed to resist digitalization in TCM, such as analogies, rhetorical questions, and the usage of attitudinal markers. This study contributes to existing knowledge of the evolution of TCM through digitalization by pragmatically examining the identity work of TCM doctors under online circumstances in Oriental scenarios.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Current development of digitalization in TCM
    • 2.2Constructing TCM doctors’ identity between tradition and modernization
  • 3.Research method
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1TCM doctors’ personal and relational identities as modern professionals
    • 4.2TCM doctors’ collective identity as tradition defenders and cultural inheritors
      • 4.2.1Tradition defenders
      • 4.2.2Cultural inheritors
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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