EAP (print) issn 2055-7752 EAST ASIAN EAP (online) issn 2055-7760 PRAGMATICS Article Medical experts as health knowledge providers: A case study of nutritionists’ identity construction in ‘wemedia’ Xingchen Shen Abstract The rise of wemedia in China has brought challenges to public health communica tion (PHC), such as the change in doctor–patient relations and the vulnerability of trust. As few researchers have touched upon the issue of identity construction during PHC in Weibo, this study aims to fill this gap and investigate one health in formation provider’s discursive construction of multiple identities in Weibo and its pragmatic effect on trust building. Through this study the author attempts to con tribute to the existing scholarship on the dynamics of identityrelation construction in wemedia and the pragmatic construction of trustworthiness in a PHC context. keywords: public health communication; pragmatics; identity; trust; wemedia Affiliation Nanjing University email:
[email protected] eap vol 4.2 2019 263–291 https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.37686 ©2019, equinox publishing 264 east asian pragmatics 1. Introduction As an important site of exchanging healthcare information and building health- care community, public health communication (PHC) has been much researched in the past several decades (Kreps, Bonaguro, & Query, 2003). As it is with other communicative activities, PHC evolves along with the evolution of communica- tion media. In China, for example, the past decade witnessed the rising power of ‘New Media’, and their