Image Construction And Relationship Cognition: Impact Research Of Medical Television Content On Guangzhou Audiences

In the risk society, physician-patient conflicts have become an unstable factor during the transitional period of China. As a “window” for people to understand the world, television not only recurs and constructs the risk, but also affects people’s cognition of risk. Most news reports usually place physicians and patients under opposite sides, their relationship seems nervous in this way. However, the role of physician in medical drama carries more positive meaning. Based on this background, this study focuses on whether there is a difference between television news’ s effect on public perception and medical drama’s.Based on cultivation theory, this study selects Guangzhou as the empirical research site, takes residents who are not engaged in medical work as respondents and adopts questionnaires and interviews. It analyzes the public’s television use by quota sampling, so as to find out how the television influences people’s perception of physician image and physician-patient relationship, and to explore whether there are other mediating factors.Research findings are as follows: First, respondents’ perception of physicians are overall positive and rational, but most of them deny that physicians spend enough time on their patients. More than half of the respondents exaggerate the number of medical disputes and hold negative views toward physician-patient relationship. Second, television news used to report many medical disputes, and there is positive relationship between heavy exposure to television news and perception on physicians’ human care quality. With the reduction in the coverage of disputes, heavy viewers tend to consider that medical disputes have decreased. Third, medical drama has created positive physician characters, heavy viewers of medical drama and respondents who perceive the content to be realistic are more likely to construct positive image of physician. Additionally, oversimplified portrayals of medical conflicts make respondents tend to believe their relationship is negative. Fourth, direct experiences have significa nt effect on respondents’ perception about physician image, but when it comes to the number of medical disputes which people has limited experience, television media still remains powerful influence.In modern society, television affects cognition and behavioral patterns of individual or collective, so it should take on the social responsibility, offer proper guidance to public opinion and create harmonious communication environment to develop medical career.