If I testify about others, my testimony is valid: A study of other-justified discourses in Chinese online medical crowdfunding
While trustworthiness has been found to exert a vital influence on the success of an online medical crowdfunding (Ba et al. 2021Ba, Zhichao, Yuxiang Zhao, Shijie Song, and Qinghua Zhu 2021 “Understanding the Determinants of Online Medical Crowdfunding Project Success in China.” Information Processing and Management 58: 1–19. ), scarce studies have investigated the concepts and culture of trust in Eastern scenarios like China (Wang 2020Wang, Xueyu 2020 “Book Review of Trust and Discourse: Organizational Perspective ”. East Asian Pragmatics 5 (2): 285–288. ). This is the first study aiming to discursively analyze how other-justified discourses, i.e., enhancing objectivity and trustworthiness through other people’s comments, contribute to obtaining potential donors’ trust in Chinese online medical crowdfunding encounters. Through the discourse analysis of 496 other-justified comments on fifty pieces of fully-funded online medical crowdfunding projects, it is found that four different types of people (a family member, a person in the same business or occupation, a classmate, a friend) offer evidence through other-justified discourses oriented towards ethos, experience, and emotion. The Wu-Lun (five ethic orders) in the acquaintance society is the underlying theoretical rationale that supports the credibility of other-justified discourse, which provides a novel research perspective for the dissemination and transitivity of trust in online medical crowdfunding. The findings serve to offer commenters an array of other-justified orientations and identity choices to engage more prospective backers in a medical donative event. The results highlight that crowdfunders not only need to display a compelling narrative strength but also raise awareness to enhance the trustworthiness of their projects, especially focusing on shreds of evidence provided by a third-person comment.
Publication history
Table of contents
- Abstract
- Keywords
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Research background
- 3.Research method
- 4.Findings
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Research background
- 3.Research method
- 4.Findings
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Funding
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- References
- Address for correspondence
- Biographical notes
1.Introduction
This paper addresses a neglected aspect of trustworthiness constructed in online crowdfunding by portraying the linguistic strategies of other-initiated or other-justified discourses11.Other-justified discourse is defined as using another person’s comment to enhance the objectivity and trustworthiness of the current speaker’s discourse (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). In the following sections, we will further explicate the concept in detail. in Chinese online medical crowdfunding. Since its emergence in China in 2009, online medical crowdfunding has gained enduring popularity for Chinese people in dire need of covering health expenditures. Despite considerable momentum in the study of online medical crowdfunding (Ba et al. 2021Ba, Zhichao, Yuxiang Zhao, Shijie Song, and Qinghua Zhu 2021 “Understanding the Determinants of Online Medical Crowdfunding Project Success in China.” Information Processing and Management 58: 1–19. ; Jin 2019Jin, Pingyue 2019 “Medical Crowdfunding in China: Empirics and Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (8): 538–544. ), there is a dearth of research on the role of trustworthiness in the outcome of online medical crowdfunding projects (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). As the potential donors decide whether give the online help-seekers financial support, they need to discriminate the help-seeking sources, which may affect the trustworthiness of the information, as to whether it is to be further disseminated or not (Ahn and Yap 2015Ahn, Mikyung, and Foong Ha Yap 2015 “Evidentiality in Interaction: A Pragmatic Analysis of Korean Hearsay Evidential Markers.” Studies in Language 39: 46–84. ). Although a tiny fraction of research has already investigated the online help-seekers’ trustworthiness constructed in medical crowdfunding via concentrating on their personal statements (Mao and Zhao 2022Mao, Yansheng, and Xin Zhao 2022 “Trust Me, Trust My Words: Trustworthiness Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Pragmatics & Society 13 (4): 703–724. ; Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ), insufficient attention has been paid to how other-justified comments on the crowdfunders’ personal statements are linguistically constructing online help-seekers’ trustworthiness. This is precisely crucial to facilitating potential donors’ trust and donation. Additionally, as multiple evidential markers are usually used as lexical or grammatical vehicles for testimony (Lim 2010Lim, Dong Sik 2010 “Evidentials and Interrogatives: A Case Study from Korean.” PhD diss. University of Southern California.), a pertinent question that has not yet been adequately answered would be what other discursive evidential might contribute to obtaining the hearers’ trust. Along this vein, one way forward to provide possible answers to this question would be to figure out how the various relational identities22.Relational identity is derived from the concept of the relational self (Brewer and Gardner 1996Brewer, Marilynn. B., and Wendi Gardner 1996 “Who is This “We”? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71: 83–93. ). In Brewer and Gardner’s (1996)Brewer, Marilynn. B., and Wendi Gardner 1996 “Who is This “We”? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71: 83–93. view, self-concept consists of three fundamental self-representations, including the individual self, the relational self, and the collective self. Relational identity is generated based on dynamic and various interpersonal relationships, often occurring in pairs, e.g., parents-children, patients-doctors, and friends-classmates. highlighted by the other-justified discourses contribute to eliciting trust from the potential donors for the online help-seekers’ request. In so doing, this paper provides a timely and necessary study of how other-justified discourses are exploited to build up a convincing comment on online help-seekers’ personal statements; meanwhile, this paper represents a further step towards understanding how other-justified discourses as evidential devices contribute to the construction of trustworthiness in online medical crowdfunding.
To provide a theoretical foundation and empirical point of departure for our analysis, some core concepts related to the occurring contexts will be briefly introduced, including the scenarios of online medical crowdfunding as well as evidentiality, trust, and other-justified discourses. Then, we will outline the research data and procedure of analysis, and discuss the results, with a short concluding section.
2.Research background
2.1The scenarios of online medical crowdfunding
Online medical crowdfunding is a practice of soliciting many small amounts of donations via social media for covering individual health-related expenses or supporting innovative medical research (Ba et al. 2021Ba, Zhichao, Yuxiang Zhao, Shijie Song, and Qinghua Zhu 2021 “Understanding the Determinants of Online Medical Crowdfunding Project Success in China.” Information Processing and Management 58: 1–19. ). In this paper, we focus on donative projects set up on online crowdfunding platforms to cover individual health-related expenses, which are commonly referred to as online medical crowdfunding in the existing literature (Jin 2019Jin, Pingyue 2019 “Medical Crowdfunding in China: Empirics and Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (8): 538–544. ).
To date, research concerning online medical crowdfunding traditionally has had two main foci, namely: the platform and the help-seeking individuals. For the former, previous studies have explored the impact of equity in public health care on the internet-based medical crowdfunding (Snyder 2016Snyder, Jeremy 2016 “Crowdfunding for Medical Care: Ethical Issues in an Emerging Health Care Funding Practice.” Hastings Center Report 46: 36–42. ). For the latter, a bulk of studies have investigated the mental status of the sponsors or the strategies of crowdfunding (Shen et al. 2015Shen, Fuyuan, Vivian C. Sheer, and Ruobing Li 2015 “Impact of Narratives on Persuasion in Health Communication: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Advertising 44: 105–113. ), especially highlighting the determining factors of the outcome of a crowdfunding project. Particularly, social media and internet-based platforms have offered the possibilities for the redistribution of medical resources and pluralized the creation as well as the transmission of crowdfunding projects (Xu and Wang 2020Xu, Kaibin, and Xiaoyu Wang 2020 “Kindhearted People, Please Save My Family: Narrative Strategies for New Media Medical Crowdfunding.” Health Communication 35 (13): 1605–1613. ), but a previous survey demonstrated that only 11% of medical crowdfunding projects were eventually funded as expected (Ramsey 2017Ramsey, Lydia 2017, June 14. “Almost Half of All Money Raised Through Crowdfunding is Going Toward Medical Expenses.” Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.in/Almost-half-of-all-money-raised-through-crowdfunding-is-going-toward-medical-expenses/articleshow/59147729.cms).
Moreover, sponsors and potential donors can only communicate with each other resorting to text-based language, which has narrowed down the research focus into speech strategies in an accessible way (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). Therefore, the latter studies in the online medical crowdfunding related literature over the past decades paid much attention to the discursive function of persuasion, identity construction, and trustworthiness construction. For instance, Shen, Sheer, and Li (2015)Shen, Fuyuan, Vivian C. Sheer, and Ruobing Li 2015 “Impact of Narratives on Persuasion in Health Communication: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Advertising 44: 105–113. have examined the health narrative of online help-seekers’ personal statements and their impact on the potential donors’ cognition, attitude, and behaviour, thus making positive persuasive effects for triggering donations. Likewise, Snyder (2016)Snyder, Jeremy 2016 “Crowdfunding for Medical Care: Ethical Issues in an Emerging Health Care Funding Practice.” Hastings Center Report 46: 36–42. examined an array of better narrative strategies that play a pivotal role in a fully-funded project.
Additionally, identity construction is another key issue in online medical crowdfunding research. For instance, Zhao and Mao (2023) 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. have argued that online help-seekers can employ an array of identity-motivated discursive strategies33.The concept of discursive strategy was respectively mentioned by Brown and Levinson (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , Wodak (2015)Wodak, Ruth 2015 “Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse-historical Approach.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, 275–288. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. , and House et al. (2021)House, Juliane, Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu, Shiyu Liu, Wenrui Shi, Zongfeng Xia, Lin Jiao 2021 “Interaction, Speech Acts and Ritual: An Integrative Model.” Lingua 257: 1–24. . In an online crowdfunding setting, the identity-motivated discursive strategies refer to various recurrent patterns (House et al. 2021House, Juliane, Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu, Shiyu Liu, Wenrui Shi, Zongfeng Xia, Lin Jiao 2021 “Interaction, Speech Acts and Ritual: An Integrative Model.” Lingua 257: 1–24. ) occurring in the context where help-seekers dynamically construct various identities to obtain prospective donors’ trustworthiness (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ) with the help of “different levels of linguistic organization and complexity” (Wodak 2015Wodak, Ruth 2015 “Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse-historical Approach.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, 275–288. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. , 12). to engage more prospective backers in a medical donative event. Additionally, Zhao and Mao (2023) 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. highlighted that the intrinsic motivation for obtaining more potential donors’ financial support lies in earning their trust, and the online help-seeker’s personal statements are tools for online trustworthiness construction. Help-seekers in online medical crowdfunding platforms use specific discursive strategies to underscore their urgent need for financial help and simultaneously construct the trustworthiness of their depictions, including self-justified discourses and other-justified discourses (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). To be specific, self-justified discourses refer to the online help-seekers’ own help-seeking narratives, and other-justified discourses are expressed by the help-seekers’ acquaintances to prove the validity of their help-seeking information.
To sum up, it is evident that previous studies have explored the discursive strategies of online medical crowdfunders’ persuasion, identity construction, and trustworthiness construction respectively from a help-seeker’s own perspective. However, little research has shed light on the discursive strategies of close acquaintances’ supportive or evidential comments on helping the help-seeker and how this kind of discourse can obtain potential donors’ trust. Taking these into account, this study aims to discursively reveal how other-justified discourses in the other-initiated comments on the crowdfunders’ personal statements contribute to various relational identity construction and obtaining potential donors’ trust. This offers a novel perspective on enhancing the trustworthiness of an online medical crowdfunding project and extends the research line of trustworthiness construction from a project initiator towards a wide range of acquaintances as testimony providers, thus making the project more engaging and impactful (Ba et al. 2021Ba, Zhichao, Yuxiang Zhao, Shijie Song, and Qinghua Zhu 2021 “Understanding the Determinants of Online Medical Crowdfunding Project Success in China.” Information Processing and Management 58: 1–19. ).
2.2Evidentiality, trust, and other-justified discourses
Prior to delving into the definition of other-justified discourses, it is helpful to take a step back and position the issue in a broader research area, like evidentiality. In general, evidentiality appears to be linked to the tacit assumption that a difference exists between what an expression is managing to convey and how its trustworthiness is perceived (Wilkes and Speer 2022Wilkes, Julie, and Susan A. Speer 2022 “Kinship Carers’ Complaints about Birth Parents’ Facebook Posts: Mediated Evidentiality and Identity Construction.” Language & Communication 83: 97–108. ). In this respect, McKeown and Ladegaard (2020)McKeown, Jamie, and Hans J. Ladegaard 2020 “Evidentiality and Identity Positioning in Online Disputes about Language Use in Hong Kong.” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 14: 53–74. maintained that the concept of evidentiality consists of two core aspects: source (who is responsible for the proposition of an utterance) and method (how is the information acquired).
In terms of the source, a rather dominant view seems to see evidentiality as a discourse category worthy of exclusive investigation in its semantic representation, like lexico-grammatical realizations of evidentiality (Chafe 1986Chafe, Wallace L. 1986 “Evidentiality in English Conversation and Academic Writing.” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, ed. by Wallace L. Chafe, and Johanna Nichols, 261–272. New York: Ablex.). To be specific, the speakers can directly code an expression in two basic ways, including self as responsible, or other as responsible (McKeown and Ladegaard 2020McKeown, Jamie, and Hans J. Ladegaard 2020 “Evidentiality and Identity Positioning in Online Disputes about Language Use in Hong Kong.” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 14: 53–74. ). An explication of self as responsible would be the use of the first-person singular in clausal verbs such as “I think”, which frees a speaker from full commitment to the factuality and validity of an utterance (Lyons 1977Lyons, John 1977 Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). While an example of other as responsible for an utterance is usually manifested as a reported speech, like “Tom said”, which is used to convey distance between the current speaker and the utterance (Chafe 1986Chafe, Wallace L. 1986 “Evidentiality in English Conversation and Academic Writing.” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, ed. by Wallace L. Chafe, and Johanna Nichols, 261–272. New York: Ablex.). In fact, the previous studies of source (i.e., who is responsible for the proposition of an utterance) treat evidentiality from a static perspective in a narrow sense, which faces isolation from epistemic modality since it focuses on the source of objective information (Palmer 1986Palmer, Frank Robert 1986 Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).
Furthermore, the bulk of the research thus far has focused on the method (i.e., how is the information acquired) as the other core aspect of evidentiality, like the investigation of intentional use of evidentiality (Mushin 2001Mushin, Ilana 2011 Evidentality and Epistemological Stance: Narrative Retelling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.). To be specific, Mushin (2001) further highlighted the fact that existent studies concerning evidentiality often neglected to comment on information that lacks overt evidential coding. When the evidential source is opaque, it is assumed that the current speaker is responsible for the utterance. To enhance its validity, a comment by others naturally omits the source and offers much distance from the current speaker, thus making it more objective and trustworthy.
In terms of the relationship between evidentiality and trustworthiness, Zhao and Mao (2023) 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. conceptualized other-justified discourses as a method of showing evidentiality and defined it as using another person’s comments to enhance the objectivity and trustworthiness of the current speaker’s discourse. In fact, evidentiality is considered as the linguistic representation of the nature of the evidence for a proposition and linguistically encoded evidence for the trustworthiness of a statement. Although previous studies related to trustworthiness primarily focus on the interrelationship between trust and discourse by viewing trust as a dynamic interpersonal construct through social and communicative interaction (Cook 2001Cook, Karen S. 2001 Trust in Society. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.), little research has systemically reported on how trust can be constructed through a piece of evidence from a third person’s comments, especially their linguistic strategies and relational identities. Therefore, the present study seeks to investigate the use of other-justified discourses in soliciting donations, with an aim to unveil the interplay of evidentiality and identity positioning for online medical crowdfunding projects, which is bound to broaden the scope of researches on trustworthiness construction in a new genre of philanthropy, like online crowdfunding. In this regard, we attempt to address the following research questions in this study:
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What are the other-justified discourses oriented in Chinese online medical crowdfunding projects?
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What are the identities constructed by these other-justified discourses in online medical crowdfunding projects?
3.Research method
3.1Data collection
“Waterdrop Crowdfunding”,44. https://www.shuidichou.com the data source in this study, is now estimated by Liu (2019)Liu, Zejun 2019 “Waterdrop Crowdfunding Has Topped Among Chinese Internet Health Care Providers with Over 20-billion-yuan Fundraising in Three Years.” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/waterdrop-crowdfunding-topped-among-chinese to be one of the best options for medical fundraising platforms, for it has left its rivals (Qingsongchou) far behind in terms of business growth and market share, and raises more than twenty billion yuan of medical funds efficiently without any charges (Liu 2019Liu, Zejun 2019 “Waterdrop Crowdfunding Has Topped Among Chinese Internet Health Care Providers with Over 20-billion-yuan Fundraising in Three Years.” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/waterdrop-crowdfunding-topped-among-chinese). Additionally, all online help-seekers’ personal statements and other-justified comments are voluntarily shared on mobile social media, like WeChat, and they are available to be viewed publicly, which means that all the data can be used for research without informed consent (Elm 2009Elm, Malin Sveningsson 2009 “How Do Various Notions of Privacy Influence Decisions in Qualitative Interest Research?” In Internet Inquiry: Conversations about Method, ed. by Annette N. Markham, and Nancy K. Baym, 49–76. New York: Sage. ). In this regard, we collected 496 other-justified comments from the first fifty fully-funded online help-seekers’ crowdfunding projects from May 2021. Because, it is found that the fully-funded projects were usually commented on by more people, which offers more data for this study. Finally, the selected extracts were translated faithfully with important analytical points underlined.
3.2Data analysis
To address the aforementioned research questions, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the discursive orientations of other-justified discourse and quantitative analysis of other-justified identities exploited to construct trustworthiness in the dataset.
As for the qualitative analysis of the orientations of other-justified discourse adopted by a third person to comment on an online help-seeker’s personal statement, we applied Grounded Theory (Corbin and Strauss 2015Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss 2015 Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (4th ed.). New York: Sage.) to guide our analysis, with the help of NVivo 12. We choose NVivo 12 as this software helps to maintain coding consistency as much as possible between two raters and calculate the interrater reliability (Yu 2020Yu, Yating 2020 “Perpetuating and/or Resisting the “Leftover” Myth? The Use of (De)legitimation Strategies in the Chinese English-language News Media.” Feminist Media Studies 96: 1–18. ). First, two independent researchers read through each comment of fifty fully-funded projects and coded the orientations emergent from 496 comments without any assumptions. Then, we marked segments closely related to the research questions (i.e., each comment which indicates what orientations of other-justified discourse were used to construct trustworthiness). For the first stage of open coding, the two researchers (a cultural pragmatist and a health discourse researcher) read through all the 496 comments and then labelled them into 257 units referring to the different topics. Note that a unit consists of a commenter’s claimed relational identity and his or her further explanation or evaluation of the online help-seeker’s plight (e.g., through a few sentences or a short paragraph). For example, “老同学，人非常好。他经历了很多困难，这两年发生了很多事情。但他并没有被打倒” (‘Old classmate, a very nice person. He has been experiencing a lot of hardships, and so many things have happened over a couple of years. But he was not crushed by it’). In this comment, “old classmate” indicates the commenter’s claimed relational identity with the help-seeker and meanwhile, the further explanation “…a very nice person. He has been experiencing a lot of hardships, and so many things have happened over a couple of years. But he was not crushed by it” was labelled as a separate unit. Then, these units were labelled by words or short sentences based on summarizing the comments and were later generalized into forty-eight primary concepts.
Concerning the second step of axial coding, comparing the meaning, intention, and function of all forty-eight primary concepts of comments, we classified them into three categories (see Table 1), namely: experience-oriented, emotion-oriented, and ethos-oriented.
| Categories | Definition | A selected example |
|---|---|---|
| Experience-oriented | A commenter’s description or evaluation of online help-seeker’s life experiences | He has been experiencing a lot of hardships, and so many things have happened over a couple of years. |
| Emotion-oriented | A commenter’s description or evaluation through sympathy-evoking discourse and empathy-evoking discourse (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ) | Hope everyone can offer your compassion! |
| Ethos-oriented | A commenter’s description or evaluation through triggering in the potential audience a sense of morality (Eisenberg et al. 2006Eisenberg, Nancy, Richard A. Fabes, and Tracy L. Spinrad 2006 “Prosocial Development.” In Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. by Nancy Eisenberg, 646–718. New York: John Wiley & Sons.) | He has no bad habits, hard work, and has been working for the family. |
Since this is a data-driven study, the generalized categories shown above came from data. Exceptions were the category “emotion-oriented”, which was named after the classification of online medical crowdfunding help-seekers’ trustworthiness construction strategies (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ) and the category “ethos-oriented”, which was named after the classification of prosocial behavior (Eisenberg et al. 2006Eisenberg, Nancy, Richard A. Fabes, and Tracy L. Spinrad 2006 “Prosocial Development.” In Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. by Nancy Eisenberg, 646–718. New York: John Wiley & Sons.). The orientations that eventually emerged were based on several rounds of discussion between the two authors. This collaborative check-up was launched to screen out the authors’ preconceived bias as much as possible (Jordan and Henderson 1995Jordan, Brigitte, and Austin Henderson 1995 “Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 4: 39–103. ). The result of the interrater reliability between the two researchers’ coding was 95.68%, which indicates a high agreement and a strong consistency (Cohen 1960Cohen, Jacob 1960 “A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales.” Educational and Psychological Measurement 20: 37–46. ).
Regarding the frequency of identities constructed in other-justified discourses, we first discuss the criteria for identifying various kinds of other-justified identities. Based on our data, it is evident that identities constructed in other-justified discourses are usually explicitly demonstrated in each comment on online help-seekers’ personal statements. To be specific, commenters usually first claim their relational identity with the online help-seekers, like “I am his/her cousin/friend/teacher/etc.”. For example, in this comment, “我是求助者男朋友的朋友” (‘I am a friend of the help-seeker’s boyfriend’), the commenter declares his other-justified identity, “a friend of the help-seeker’s boyfriend”. Next, we started tagging separately the 496 comments from fifty projects of online medical crowdfunding. The findings of other-justified identities constructed in other-justified discourses that emerged in this study were categorized on the basis of their identity attributes (a family member, a person in the same business or occupation, a classmate, a friend) according to social distance. Since all the other-justified identities were directly claimed, there was not a difference in opinion among the two coders during categorization coding.
4.Findings
4.1The orientations of other-justified discourses
The study identified three categories of orientations of other-justified discourses adopted by a third person to indicate evidence of an online help-seeker worthy of help in an online medical crowdfunding project. It is worth noting that one item of comment may consist of more than one orientation or none of the observable orientations. For example, quite a few comments are very brief and with no mention of the commenter’s relation with the help-seeker (e.g., “It is true.”). These comments were excluded and we only examined comments in which the relational identity occurs. As such, analysis of the 496 comments resulted in a total of 257 occurrences of orientations in other-justified discourses posted on online medical crowdfunding platforms. According to our dataset, experience-oriented (24.90%, sixty-four instances), emotion-oriented (9.73%, twenty-five instances), and ethos-oriented (65.37%, 168 instances) discourses were usually presented together in one other-justified comment. Obviously, regarding orientations of other-justified discourses, the commenters favored the ethos-oriented discourses (65.37%, 168 instances), which is in line with the role related to ethos in the components of trustworthiness (Mayer et al. 1995Mayer, Roger C., James H. Davis, and F. David Schoorman 1995 “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust.” Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 709–734. ). The following extracts from our dataset explicate the three types of orientations respectively.
4.1.1Experience-oriented discourse justified by others
老同学，人非常好。 他经历了很多困难，这两年发生了很多事情。 但他并没有被打倒。希望每个人都可以伸出援助之手，多多益善。
lǎo tóng xué, rén fēi cháng hǎo. tā jīng lì le hěn duō kùn nán, zhè liǎng nián fā shēng le hěn duō shì qíng. dàn tā bìng méi yǒu bèi dǎ dǎo. xī wàng měi gè rén dōu kě yǐ shēn chū yuán zhù zhī shǒu, duō duō yì shàn.
‘Old classmate, a very nice person. He has been experiencing a lot of hardships, and so many things have happened over a couple of years. But he was not crushed by it. I hope everyone can lend him a helping hand. The more, the better.’
Experience-oriented discourse justified by others in online medical crowdfunding platforms refers to a narrative or evaluative description of online help-seeker’s life experiences by the commenter, including the help-seeker’s self-involved experiences or the commenter and help-seeker’s shared experiences. In Extract 1, the commenter briefly depicted a picture of the help-seeker’s strong-willed persistence in front of the hardship (as indicated by the underlined part the key word “experiencing”). Accordingly, the readers can get a fuller picture of the vulnerable position the online help-seeker takes up by reading the commenter’s embodied evaluations, thus triggering their prosocial needs of helping and exhibiting kindness or generosity towards the help-seeker (Vaish et al. 2009Vaish, Amrisha, Malinda Carpenter, and Michael Tomasello 2009 “Sympathy Through Affective Perspective Taking and its Relation to Prosocial Behavior in Toddlers.” Developmental Psychology 45 (2): 534–543. ).
4.1.2Emotion-oriented discourse justified by others
我是求助者男朋友的朋友。这个女孩乐观开朗。她和我的朋友都在武汉大学读博士。这对男孩和女孩才貌双全，非常般配，马上都要结婚了，实在太可怜了。
wǒ shì qiú zhù zhě nán péng yǒu de péng yǒu. zhè gè nǚ hái lè guān kāi lǎng. tā hé wǒ de péng yǒu dōu zài wǔ hàn dà xué dú bó shì. zhè duì nán hái hé nǚ hái cái mào shuāng quán, fēi cháng bān pèi, mǎ shàng dōu yào jié hūn le, shí zài tài kě lián le.
‘I am a friend of the help-seeker’s boyfriend. The girl is optimistic and cheerful. The girl and my friend are Ph.D. Candidates of Wuhan University. The boy and the girl are both talented with good appearances. They are so matched and are about to get married. It is very pitiful.’
Emotion-oriented discourse justified by others signifies a commenter’s description or evaluation through sympathy-evoking discourse and empathy-evoking discourse (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). In Extract 2, the commenter made a sympathetic tone to the online help-seeker’s plight (e.g., “It is very pitiful”), which stipulates in the potential readers a feeling of concern for the online help-seeker’s misfortune and an empathic sharing of the commenter’s negative affective state (Eisenberg et al. 2006Eisenberg, Nancy, Richard A. Fabes, and Tracy L. Spinrad 2006 “Prosocial Development.” In Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. by Nancy Eisenberg, 646–718. New York: John Wiley & Sons.). In reality, Hoffman (2000)Hoffman, Martin L. 2000 Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. maintained that sympathy is associated with other-oriented prosocial behavior. In this sense, in Extract 2, the commenter’s sympathetic evaluation concerning the help-seeker’s pitiful situation plays a critical role in motivating prosocial behavior toward others in need.
4.1.3Ethos-oriented discourse justified by others
是我的老朋友，诚实热情。这一切都是真的。最近几年，他的日子很艰难。他在生活中经历了许多挫折，不过他始终保持着积极的生活态度，一直在为家人辛勤工作。这一次，他实在别无选择，才会发起水滴众筹项目。希望大家可以帮助一下他，每个人献出一点爱心来帮助他渡过难关。
shì wǒ de lǎo péng yǒu, chéng shí rè qíng. zhè yī qiè dōu shì zhēn de. zuì jìn jǐ nián, tā de rì zi hěn jiān nán. tā zài shēng huó zhōng jīng lì le xǔ duō cuò zhé, bù guò tā shǐ zhōng bǎo chí zhe jī jí de shēng huó tài dù, yī zhí zài wèi jiā rén xīn qín gōng zuò. zhè yī cì, tā shí zài bié wú xuǎn zé, cái huì fā qǐ shuǐ dī zhòng chóu xiàng mù. xī wàng dà jiā kě yǐ bāng zhù yī xià tā, měi gè rén xiàn chū yī diǎn ài xīn lái bāng zhù tā dù guò nán guān.
‘Old friend, honest and enthusiastic. All things are true. In recent years, it has been difficult for him. He has experienced many setbacks in life, but he has always maintained a positive attitude and has been working hard for his family. This time, he has no other choice but to launch the project of waterdrop crowdfunding. I hope everyone can help him and everyone can offer a little love to tide him over the difficulties.’
Ethos-oriented discourse justified by others concerns a commenter’s description or evaluation of the online help-seekers’ notable characteristics, especially their positive personality (Eisenberg et al. 2006Eisenberg, Nancy, Richard A. Fabes, and Tracy L. Spinrad 2006 “Prosocial Development.” In Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. by Nancy Eisenberg, 646–718. New York: John Wiley & Sons.). In Extract 3, the commenter employed an ethos-oriented strategy (e.g., “honest and enthusiastic” and “but he has always maintained a positive attitude and has been working hard for his family”) to display that the help-seeker has an upward spirit in the face of adversity and is definitely worthy of help. Mayer et al. (1995)Mayer, Roger C., James H. Davis, and F. David Schoorman 1995 “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust.” Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 709–734. held that a person’s propensity to trust and the attributes or characteristics of the trustee are considered key factors in a relationship of trust, which is strongly related to ethos. This may help to explain why the ethos-oriented strategy in our dataset is predominately adopted by commenters to offer convincing reasons for testifying a donation on Chinese online medical crowdfunding platforms.
4.2The claimed identities underlying the other-justified discourses
This section is dedicated to demonstrating the finding of the claimed identities of other-justified discourses. Through data analysis of 496 comments, we found four different types of claimed relational identity (a family member, a person in the same business or occupation, a classmate, a friend) offering evidence through other-justified discourses (see Table 2).
| Categories | Subcategories | Frequency | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| A family member | Parents-children, husbands-wives, brothers-sisters, and cousins | 124 instances | 48.25% |
| A person in the same business or occupation | 69 instances | 26.85% | |
| A classmate | 41 instances | 15.95% | |
| A friend | 23 instances | 8.95% |
To be specific, the most adoptable identity, a family member, e.g., parents-children, husbands-wives, brothers-sisters, and cousins, is of the highest frequency (48.25%, 124 instances), followed by a relatively accessible identity, a person in the same business or occupation (26.84%, sixty-nine instances) and a classmate (15.95%, forty-one instances), and then the identity of someone’s friend (8.95%, twenty-three instances) as the last identity choice.
4.2.1A family member
这是我兄弟，情况属实。 由于经济条件有限，他最近已经无法负担他母亲的医疗费。希望大家献献爱心，感谢您的支持。
zhè shì wǒ xiōng dì, qíng kuàng shǔ shí. yóu yú jīng jì tiáo jiàn yǒu xiàn, tā zuì jìn yǐ jīng wú fǎ fù dān tā mǔ qīn de yī liáo fèi. xī wàng dà jiā xiàn xiàn ài xīn, gǎn xiè nín de zhī chí.
‘This is my brother. The situation is true. Due to his limited financial condition, it is impossible to cover the medical expenditures for his mother recently. I hope everyone can give your love and thank you for your support.’
Hsieh (2018)Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin 2018 “Confucian Principles: A Study of Chinese Americans’ Interpersonal Relationships in Selected Children’s Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 49: 216–231. defined a prototypical Chinese family as one that is comprised of three generations, which keeps family members close and allows them to lean on one another for support. Just as indicated in Extract 4, “my brother” comes after a linking verb “is” to tell the potential donors more information about the relationship with the online help-seeker. The commenter positioned himself as a family member of the online help-seeker while testifying to the authenticity of the online medical crowdfunding. As China is believed to be a society of acquaintances (Fei 1992Fei, Xiaotong 1992 From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Oakland: University of California Press. ), the evidential comments from a family member are more convincing than anything else. This is partly because in Chinese culture, death and disease are always considered as negative life events (Hsieh 2018Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin 2018 “Confucian Principles: A Study of Chinese Americans’ Interpersonal Relationships in Selected Children’s Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 49: 216–231. ), which are usually avoided in public unless it cannot be avoided as such open talking or lying may jinx one’s fate, especially for one’s beloved. In this sense, while the commenter positioned himself as a family member of the online help-seeker, it naturally and authentically entitled him an obligation of being honest, which contributes to a positive and persuasive construction of trustworthiness to elicit the expected donation.
4.2.2A person in the same business or occupation
我在周巷镇大同西路252号开了一家小店。他是我隔壁武大朗烧饼店的前老板。 我和他一起开了好几年的店，他没有啥坏习惯，努力工作，一直在为家庭工作。 作为一个农民工，他家里没有房也没有车。希望每个人都可以同情他！
wǒ zài zhōu xiàng zhèn dà tóng xī lù 252 hào kāi le yī jiā xiǎo diàn. tā shì wǒ gé bì wǔ dà lǎng shāo bǐng diàn de qián lǎo bǎn. wǒ hé tā yī qǐ kāi le hǎo jǐ nián de diàn, tā méi yǒu shá huài xí guàn, nǔ lì gōng zuò, yī zhí zài wèi jiā tíng gōng zuò. zuò wéi yī gè nóng mín gong, tā jiā lǐ méi yǒu fáng yě méi yǒu chē. xī wàng měi gè rén dōu kě yǐ tóng qíng tā!
‘I run a small business at No. 252, Datop0-ng West Road, Zhouxiang Town. He is the former owner boss of the Wu Dalang biscuits shop next door to me. After several years of working along with him, he has no bad habits, hard work, and has been working for the family. As a migrant worker, the family does not have a house or a car. I hope everyone can offer your compassion!’
The identity of a person in the same business or occupation conventionally refers the identity constructed by a person who works together in the same company or office (that is, colleagueMerriam-Webster 2022 s.v. “Colleague”. Accessed 21 June 2022. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colleague in a narrow sense; Merriam-Webster 2022), but it can be generally extended to signify a person who runs small businesses in the same street in China. Likewise, in Extract 5, the commenter offered extremely detailed information on the working relationship between him and the online help-seeker. The commenter’s detailed self-presentation (e.g., “I run a small business at No. 252, Datong West Road, Zhouxiang Town”) can be essentially regarded as a practice of self-disclosure, defined as revealing information about one’s own life and experiences, which has been linked to greater levels of trust (Wheeless and Grotz 1977Wheeless, Lawrence R., and Janis Grotz 1977 “The Measurement of Trust and its Relationship to Self-disclosure.” Human Communication Research 3 (3): 250–257. ) so as to facilitate the expected donation for the patient in need of financial support through online medical crowdfunding.
4.2.3A classmate
谢老师是我妻子的同学。上个月，她身体不舒服，让我帮她找个房间。我妈妈帮她找了一个小房间。我妈妈注意到她身体不太好。没想到，突然听到了这样的坏消息。希望各界人士都可以帮助她。
xiè lǎo shī shì wǒ qī zi de tóng xué. shàng gè yuè, tā shēn tǐ bù shū fú, ràng wǒ bāng tā zhǎo gè fáng jiān. wǒ mā mā bāng tā zhǎo le yī gè xiǎo fáng jiān. wǒ mā mā zhù yì dào tā shēn tǐ bù tài hǎo. méi xiǎng dào, tū rán tīng dào le zhè yàng de huài xiāo xī. xī wàng gè jiè rén shì dōu kě yǐ bāng zhù tā.
‘Ms. Xie is my wife’s classmate. Last month, she felt not well and asked me to help her find a room. My mother helped her to find a studio. My mother has noticed that she was not fine. Unexpectedly, I received such bad news all of a sudden. I hope everyone from all walks of life can help her.’
A classmate narrowly refers to someone who is/was in the same class. In Extract 6, the commenter positioned himself as one of the acquaintances of the online help-seeker, mentioning a kind of trustworthy relationship with the help-seeker, a classmate. Actually, acquaintance-based trust is not as credible as an intimate-relationship trust, like a family member (Bista et al. 2010Bista, Sanat Kumar, Keshav Dahal, Peter Cowling, and Bhadra Man Tuladhar 2010 “Acquaintance-based Trust Model for the Evolution of Cooperation in Business Games.” Service Oriented Computing and Applications 4 (3): 181–189. ). Therefore, by introducing an intimate relationship, the commenter’s wife and his mother, the commenter threw the bait to potential donors by mentioning some details about the shared experiences with the help-seeker (e.g., “my mother helped her to find a studio. My mother has noticed that she was not fine”), thus yielding tangible increases in trust. (Zhao and Mao 2021Zhao, Xin, and Yansheng Mao 2021 “Trust Me, I Am a Doctor: Discourse of Trustworthiness by Chinese Doctors in Online Medical Consultation.” Health Communication 36 (3): 372–380. ).
4.2.4A friend
文静是我读博期间最好的朋友。我们一起参加了很多活动，比如马拉松和露营。 我们还一起展望未来……这样一个积极、善良、热情的女孩，我从没想过她会经历如此艰难的时刻。希望大家可以为她捐款，祝她早日康复，早日回到校园！
wén jìng shì wǒ dú bó qī jiān zuì hǎo de péng yǒu. wǒ men yī qǐ cān jiā le hěn duō huó dòng, bǐ rú mǎ lā sōng hé lù yíng. wǒ men hái yī qǐ zhǎn wàng wèi lái……zhè yàng yī gè jī jí, shàn liáng, rè qíng de nǚ hái, wǒ cóng méi xiǎng guò tā huì jīng lì rú cǐ jiān nán de shí kè. xī wàng dà jiā kě yǐ wèi tā juān kuǎn, zhù tā zǎo rì kāng fù, zǎo rì huí dào xiào yuan!
‘Wenjing is my best friend during the period of my Ph.D. and we have participated in many activities, like marathons and camping. We look forward to the future together……Such a girl with a positive, kind and enthusiastic attitude, I have never expected that she would have experienced such a difficult time. I hope everyone can offer her a small donation and I wish she would get well and come back to campus soon!’
Hsieh (2018)Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin 2018 “Confucian Principles: A Study of Chinese Americans’ Interpersonal Relationships in Selected Children’s Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 49: 216–231. concluded that hsin (‘trust’) provides a framework for relationships between friends in China, which means that a friend is a person who one not only knows but also trusts. As shown in Extract 7, the commenter positioned herself as the best friend of the online help-seeker by adopting an experience-oriented strategy (e.g., “we have participated in many activities, like marathons and camping”) and ethos-oriented strategy (e.g., “a positive, kind and enthusiastic attitude”), thus promoting the image of the online help-seeker as worthy of help. Similar to Extract 4, it is assumed that the best friend will not curse the help-seeker into a serious illness, which is accordingly helpful to win the potential donors’ trust (Hsieh 2018Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin 2018 “Confucian Principles: A Study of Chinese Americans’ Interpersonal Relationships in Selected Children’s Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 49: 216–231. ) for donation in online medical crowdfundings.
5.Discussion
Successfully getting a fully-funded online medical crowdfunding project is a key goal for the online help-seekers in dire need of financial support (Ba et al. 2021Ba, Zhichao, Yuxiang Zhao, Shijie Song, and Qinghua Zhu 2021 “Understanding the Determinants of Online Medical Crowdfunding Project Success in China.” Information Processing and Management 58: 1–19. ), and low trust by the potential donors is a key barrier in the process of donation (Zhao and Mao 2023 2023 “The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-funders: Help-seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowdfunding Discourses.” Health Communication 38 (2): 363–370. ). Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis concerning the orientations of other-justified discourse and the positioning of their claimed identities, the current study sought to uncover the underlying reasons accounting for trustworthiness construction through other-justified discourses in Chinese online medical crowdfunding.
Based on the quantitative findings of orientations of other-justified discourse, it was found that the ethos-oriented strategy is predominantly adopted by commenters (65.37%, 168 instances), followed by the experience-oriented strategy (24.90%, sixty-four instances), and the emotion-oriented strategy (9.73%, twenty-five instances). There are several points to be borne in mind while interpreting the orientations of other-justified discourses.
First, Aristotle put ethos at the first place in performing persuasion and further divided ethos into three different dimensions. Further, he thought these three components (good sense, good moral character, and good will) helped to induce the audience to believe a thing apart from any proof of it, which is in line with the results of this study that ethos-oriented strategy serves as the most favorable other-justified orientation. To be specific, in our study, in Extract 1 (e.g., “a very nice person”), Extract 2 (“the girl is optimistic and cheerful”), and Extract 3 (“honest and enthusiastic”), the commenters who attempted to establish the online help-seeker’s trustworthiness preferred to influence the characteristics that comprise speaker ethos by explicitly offering positive evaluations. Moreover, to enhance the trustworthy sense of an online help-seeker’s personal statement, the help-seekers are usually expected to label themselves as an echo towards which they have an attitude of indomitable will (see Extracts 1–3), which is consistent with the element of “integrity” proposed in Mayer et al.’s (1995)Mayer, Roger C., James H. Davis, and F. David Schoorman 1995 “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust.” Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 709–734. model of trust.
The experience-oriented strategy can be regarded as a kind of disclosure, which is a concrete and practical way for speakers to improve their relations with the audience, including building trust (Nazione et al. 2019Nazione, Samantha, Evan K. Perrault, and David M. Keating 2019 “Finding Common Ground: Can Provider-patient Race Concordance and Self-disclosure Bolster Patient Trust, Perceptions, and Intentions?” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 6 (5): 962–972. ). In essence, there are some important discoveries revealed by an array of studies. For example, the strategy of experience-sharing has been testified to have much impact on constructing a trustworthy image by the speaker (Zhao and Mao 2021Zhao, Xin, and Yansheng Mao 2021 “Trust Me, I Am a Doctor: Discourse of Trustworthiness by Chinese Doctors in Online Medical Consultation.” Health Communication 36 (3): 372–380. ). However, previous studies mainly focus on the help-seeker’s self-experience sharing and, in our dataset, an experience-oriented strategy not only refers to a reported speech concerning the online help-seeker’s personal experience (e.g., Extract 1: “he has been experienced a lot of hardships, and so many things have happened over a couple of years”, and Extract 3: “in recent years, it has been difficult for him. He has experienced many setbacks in life”), but also includes the commenter’s shared experience with the online help-seeker (e.g., Extract 7: “we have participated in many actives, like marathons, and camping. We look forward to the future together”). Obviously, our results indicate that other-initiated experience-sharing strategy offers more objective evidence than the help-seeker’s self-narratives, which extended the line of study concerning the argument that the help-seeker’s self-experience sharing makes positive persuasive effects for triggering donations (Shen et al. 2015Shen, Fuyuan, Vivian C. Sheer, and Ruobing Li 2015 “Impact of Narratives on Persuasion in Health Communication: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Advertising 44: 105–113. ).
This study also set out to explore the study of emotive discourse without being restricted to sympathy or empathy, relating it to the trustworthiness construction. Although the emotion-oriented strategy is the least adopted in other-justified discourses, the commenters’ sympathetic or empathetic evaluation can serve as objective evidence for gaining potential donors’ trust. For instance, Hoffman (2000)Hoffman, Martin L. 2000 Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. proposed that trust is occasionally triggered through sympathy-oriented or empathy-oriented discourse for the concerns of a trusted person, because sympathy or empathy, such an emotional state that enables to shift the audience’s attention towards others’ pain and, as a result, increases the audience’s drive to help dampen the other’s pain (Chi et al. 2020Chi, Shu-Cheng Steve, Raymond A. Friedman, Shu-Chen Chen, Ming-Jie Tsai, and Mei-Ling Yuan 2020 “Sympathy Toward a Company Facing Disaster: Examining the Interaction Effect between Internal Attribution and Role Similarity.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 56: 73–106. ). To this end, the findings suggest an implication for looking into trustworthiness construction from a wider perspective, especially the emotion-oriented view. In short, it is difficult to pin down the exact effect of each type of oriented strategy in a natural other-justified comment, in that experience-oriented strategy, emotion-oriented strategy, and ethos-oriented strategy are usually mixed up to win trust from the potential donors.
In terms of the claimed identities of other-justified discourses, it is not surprising that a family member identity appeared the most in all identity positioning presented in our dataset, followed by a semi-acquaintance identity (a person in the same business or occupation, and a classmate), and a friend identity. Several possible explanations for this can be derived from the traditional Chinese values and the foundations of Chinese society.
To be specific, the philosophy of Confucianism was established around 2,500 years ago and was slow to change, which had a profound influence on Chinese people’s consciousness and framework of interpersonal relationships. For instance, it defined the general beliefs and values (Wu-Lun Shu, a book detailing the five principles) that most Chinese people have been observing for centuries, which is also applied to the relationship of trustworthiness construction in that trust is essentially a kind of ethic currency for interpersonal relations. Wu-Lun includes two portions, the five kinds of interpersonal relations and their five subordinate principles. For example, Hsieh (2018)Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin 2018 “Confucian Principles: A Study of Chinese Americans’ Interpersonal Relationships in Selected Children’s Picture Books.” Children’s Literature in Education 49: 216–231. explained that yi (‘sense of honor’) defines a faith between emperor and officers (or supervisors and employers in modern times); chin (‘intimacy’) signifies a close tie between parents and children; bie (‘alternate responsibilities’) emphasizes different roles that husbands/males and wives/females should play; hsu (‘priority’) represents hierarchy orders and duties between siblings; hsin (‘trust’) provides a framework for relationships between friends. The following analysis of the abovementioned extracts illustrates the use of other-justified identities by a third person to indicate evidence for trust.
To be specific, the identities claimed through other-justified discourses based on our dataset manifest four basic types of identities except for emperor and officers (or supervisors and employers in modern times). Obviously, a family member identity appears most in other-justified discourses, because this is much associated with Chinese special family guanxi networks. Particularly, Fei (1992)Fei, Xiaotong 1992 From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Oakland: University of California Press. stated that the Chinese family size varies in terms of the activities undertaken and the whole family (including brothers, sisters, uncles, etc.) are cooperative and mutually supportive. Additionally, Fei (1992)Fei, Xiaotong 1992 From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Oakland: University of California Press. maintained that trust can be divided into two types, including generalized trust and particularized trust. Chinese people predominantly accept the particularized trust, which stems from a secure relationship or more intimate guanxi, like a family relationship, romantic relationship, friendship or acquaintanceship.
As a typical “acquaintance society” or “a society without any strangers”, Chinese people trust each other out of familiarity and intimacy. Also, Hall and Ames (1987)Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames 1987 Thinking Through Confucius. New York: Suny Publishing. maintained that Wu-Lun, a general Chinese traditional set of values, encourages brotherhood among friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Therefore, if we studied various types of other-justified identities from a horizontal perspective, the commenters mainly claimed their certain relational identity that positions a person as a family member, a person in the same business or occupation, a classmate, and a friend, generating a sense of trust from the intimate guanxi in “acquaintance society”. Additionally, if we take a vertical perspective to observe these different types of other-justified identities, another interesting phenomenon is that gaining the potential donors’ trust can be regarded as a gradual process that is linked with an acquaintance as a fundamental resource.
According to our dataset, it is found that the commenter’s other-justified discourses play a bridging role to gain many strangers’ trust by positioning an acquaintance identity (e.g., a family member and a friend), which is in line with findings from Fei’s (1992)Fei, Xiaotong 1992 From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Oakland: University of California Press. idea of acquaintance-based trust. Additionally, the present findings also indicated that positioning as a semi-acquaintance identity (e.g., a person in the same business or occupation and a classmate) is also an effective and efficient tool to extend the online help-seekers’ current social network and to engage more strangers to this help-seeking project, due to the complexity of trust in the virtual world.
Unlike trustworthiness constructed in the real world, the online help-seeking information is accessible to the potential donors only resorting to their acquaintances’ retweets of the original help-seeking information. Therefore, a trustworthy project in the virtual online scenarios primarily relies on the online help-seeker’s semi-acquaintances’ testimony and their dissemination. This could render the potential donors naturally inclined to regard the online help-seeker’s personal statement as a fact instead of a narrative story. This is supported by Bista et al.’s (2010)Bista, Sanat Kumar, Keshav Dahal, Peter Cowling, and Bhadra Man Tuladhar 2010 “Acquaintance-based Trust Model for the Evolution of Cooperation in Business Games.” Service Oriented Computing and Applications 4 (3): 181–189. transitivity property of trust: A trusts B, B trusts C, and A trusts C. Even if A does not have a direct relationship with C, B’s acquaintance identity largely enhances C’s trustworthiness towards A. Accordingly, the transitivity of trust offers a novel perspective and solid theoretical foundation for enhancing the trustworthiness of online medical crowdfunding projects in China.
6.Conclusion
While many previous studies have paid attention to trustworthiness construction in online medical crowdfunding, this study adopted a novel perspective that takes a third-person stance to investigate various orientations of other-justified discourses and different types of identities claimed through other-justified discourses. Based on the analysis of first-hand data, the present findings reveal that the commenters positioned themselves as four different types of people (a family member, a person in the same business or occupation, a classmate, a friend) to offer evidence through other-justified discourses oriented towards ethos, experience, and emotion. Also, it is pertinent to indicate that the diversity of other-justified identities reflects that in a typical “acquaintance society”, trust is profoundly influenced by traditional Confucianism and can be constructed through acquaintances and semi-acquaintances. Theoretically, this study finds that trust in Chinese society is intrinsically a kind of relationship that centers around Wu-Lun and is generated through an acquaintance tie. Practically, the results of this study could contribute to enhancing the trustworthiness of an online medical help-seeking project by offering an array of effective other-justified orientations and identities.
We have argued that it is quite difficult to pin down the exact effect of a certain other-justified identity in a comment in online medical crowdfundings. According to our dataset, these observable other-justified orientations and identities are intertwined in order to win the trust of the potential donors. Thus, future studies might need to adopt a triangulation of methodology (Morse 1991Morse, Anice M. 1991 “Approaches to Qualitative-Quantitative Methodological Triangulation.” Nursing Research 40: 120–123. ), which can offer the commenters an accurate pragmatic picture of the most effective orientation and identity by adding interviews with the selected donors.
Funding
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the two reviewers’ insightful suggestions for this research.