If the Coronavirus Doesn’t Scare You, the Banners Will—A Case Study of Early COVID-19 Banners

Hongjie Dong, Minli Zhou, Dewei Che and Adams Bodomo
Additional contact information
Hongjie Dong: School of Liberal Arts, Xi’an University, Xi’an 710065, China
Minli Zhou: Department of Liberal Arts, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510303, China
Dewei Che: Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Adams Bodomo: Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 24, 1-19

Abstract: As a crucial element of China’s political and cultural life, “banners”, or bi?oy?, have been around for decades, in support of national-level policies such as family planning and the governing mottos of Presidents. The banners that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic which was also the subject of a national-level driven policy, have been involved in a nation-wide public debate over the language styles of banners used to urge people to stay indoors. Based on the analysis of the early COVID-19 banners and the related online comments, this article analyzes the language style patterns of the banners and the mode of banner circulation. The study found that the manner in which the banners are circulated goes beyond a unidirectional path of on-site instant communication. This process is facilitated by social networks and mass media, which, during circulation, twice created a banner upgrade. The upgrades created decontextualization and function extension of the banners, whereas audience feedback triggered an adaptive adjustment of the language style of the banners. This article suggests that the study of the use and spread of banners, especially the early COVID-19 banners, sheds light on the study of mass communication and discourse style, and also how measures to contain pandemics such as COVID-19 can be communicated.

Keywords: Chinese banners; mass communication; circulation mode; discourse style; adaptive adjustment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/24/9595/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/24/9595/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:24:p:9595-:d:466066

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().