Articles on depression in American medical websites: an analysis based on appraisal theory

Abstract

The perfection of medical information system, the expertise and credibility of its contents are of great importance since an increasing number of people rely on online medical information. Based on Appraisal Theory, this paper selected 14 online medical articles on depression (abbreviated as OMDD) from four American medical websites (APS, Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and Everyday Health), describing the distribution of the Appraisal resources and analysing the interaction between article writers and its putative readers. The paper finds that WebMD uses many Concur resources and rhetorical questions to predict the putative readers’ “hkemindedness” with the writers. Mayo Clinic’s introduction to depression includes a lot of Dialogistic Expansive resources, suggesting that readers are “persuadable”. Everyday Health persuades readers to accept certain treatment though describing the writers’ own feelings and introducing the voice of doctors. APS employs Attributive resources to provide readers with the latest research achievements so as to encourage them to conduct further research. The articles of the four websites adopt different Appraisal strategies to realize their interpersonal meanings, which provides reference for other health communication platforms.