This book provides readers with the latest research on the affective aspect of online interactions between doctors and e-patients in the context of China from a poststructuralist discourse analysis perspective. At the heart of this book is the presentation of four chapters which address (1) indirect negative emotional acts by e-patients and empathic acts by doctors (constituting affective practice), (2) the interactional discursive features involved in the affective practice, (3) discursive positions of e-patients and doctors within the affective practice context, and (4) power relations that are reflected in the positionings. This book sheds light on the importance of examining the affective facet of medical consultation, when it comes to identifying non-traditional positions and power relations in doctor-patient communication. It also provides the implication that e-healthcare platforms, especially those with an e-commercialized model for healthcare services, have potential to produce a type of neo-liberal discoursethe e-commercialized medical consultation discoursein which patients and caregivers, who are acknowledged as the less powerful group in the traditional healthcare activities, are empowered and privileged.

Yu ZHANG got her PhD degree from the Department of English at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2020. For her PhD degree, she studied discourse analysis in the context of online health communication. She currently holds a teaching position in the School of Foreign Studies at Beijing Information Science and Technology University. Her work has been published as articles in academic journals such as Health Communication, Applied Linguistics Review, Discourse and Communication, Chinese Journal of Communication, Communication& Medicine, and Journal of Foreign Languages (). Her major research interest is discourse studies in the context of health communication.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Online Space for Health Communication and the China Context.- Chapter 3. Affective Practice and A Poststructuralist Perspective.- Chapter 4. Discourse Practice in Health Communication.- Chapter 5. Research Sites and OMC Texts.- Chapter 6. Emotional and Empathic Discursive Acts.- Chapter 7. From Affective Discursive Acts to Affective Interaction.- Chapter 8. Discursive Positionings: Bucking the Traditional Roles.- Chapter 9. Dynamic Power Relations Informed by Discursive Positionings.- Chapter 10. Concluding Remarks.