ABSTRACT
Despite an emerging and significant impact upon daily life, health, and self-care in China, the popularity of smartphone-based short videos (duan shipin短视频) has not yet drawn enough attention from either anthropological study or the study of Medical Humanities. The research of this chapter is part of an ongoing long-term (Feb 2018–June 2019) ethnographic research among the retired population in Shanghai, with a specific focus on the use of short videos and their influence and potential for influence upon everyday health and self-care. Along with this development in digital technology, there is an ever-growing and ever-richening visual language among the elderly in mainland China. Given the challenges that China faces with its ageing population and the breakdown of the family as the unit of care, understanding what sorts of clips are more likely to be watched and understood and circulated, and why, becomes critical. This chapter argues that how the combination of the topic, the viewer, the properties of the clip itself, and how they interact requires greater investment from the field of health-related communication.
