Science, Strategy, and Critique in Mediatized Health Communication: A Review of the 2nd Panel Session at MHM 2026

Abstract

The second panel session of the 9th International Academic Conference on Medicine, and Media and Doctoral Symposium took place on the afternoon of 18 July 2026 at the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University. The session was titled Health Communication in the Age of Mediatization: Science, Strategy and Critique (Part I). Jian Rui, Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, South China University of Technology, chaired the session. Zheng Yang, Associate Professor at the School of Communication, Suzhou University, co-chaired the session. Both also served as discussants. Five studies examined trust in generative artificial intelligence (AI) for health, popularity cues and message framing in women's exercise intentions, and puffery in short videos on traditional Chinese medicine. They also addressed temporally differentiated threat appeals and expectant fathers' support for breastfeeding, as well as the visual design of AI-doctor interfaces for older users. The commentary converged on parsimony in model specification, experimental-stimulus construction, the interpretability of engagement indicators, and the incorporation of contextual particularity into theoretical explanation. The open discussion distinguished phenomenon-driven from theory-driven research. This distinction bears directly on how locally grounded scholarship can generate propositions that travel beyond the immediate case.