Health And Consumption: A Textual Analysis Of Woman's Health Magazine

Health and consumption are the two main topics in today's Chinese Woman's Health magazines. This thesis is a textual analysis of the two typical Chinese Woman's magazines: Trends health and Woman's Day, from the macroscopical aspect to the microscopical aspect by using quantitative analysis and text description methods. The analysis samples are the 36 volumes of the first season from 2002 to 2007. The purpose of this research is to find out the effects of the social factors on the health and consumption informations in these magazines so as to discuss the roles of woman's health magazines in the health communication process.The proportion changing trends of the five categories articles (body health, mental health, social adaption, morality health and the others), advertisements, the consumptive articles and the consumption imformation during the 6 years are studied by content analysis. The frequency of different manufactures and commercial services shown in the articles are discussed as well. As a result, a positive trend is found that the woman's health magazines are recommending a scientific health concept and lifestyle. However, the negative trend is that there are too much and increasing consumption information especially cosmetic information in these magazines. In the semeiology analysis, the thesis analyzes two context cases and discovers the comsumer culture expressions hiding there: shaping a consuming female representation and making a body anxiety atmosphere.Finally, it is discussed how to balance the health information and consumption information in this comsumptive era. It's suggested that the woman's health magazines should strengthen their 'watch-dog' roles, upgrade their understanding on health communication function, persevere the correct health concept so as to satisfy and lead the readers'health information needs to a right way.