The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-Funders: Help-Seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowd-Funding Discourses

Ineffective identity construction of crowd-funders for medical events is a major factor blocking donations from arriving in time to help patients in need. There is a dearth of report on the discursive veins of identity construction in a web-based crowd-funding scenario in Eastern setting, such as in China. This is the first Chinese study aimed to discursively observe, analyze and evaluate identity construction of crowd-funders in online fundraising setting. Content and discourse analyses were employed, with focus on linguistic and interactional dimensions of 500 pieces of online fundraisers' personal statements (collected from https://www.qschou.com). Findings indicate that three different types of fundraisers' identities (as a family member/ a patient/ the disadvantaged) were constructed through discursive strategies oriented toward ethos, expertise and emotion respectively. The findings are conducive to offering online help-seekers an array of identity-motivated discursive strategies to make more prospective backers engage in a medical donative event. Results highlight that crowd-funders need support and training to obtain the expected amount of donation, focusing on enhancing the rhetoric toward sincerity, honesty and morality.