Abstract
China is in the midst of a “psy-boom” as the use of psychological services and interest in psychology and psychologically informed personal development tools are seeing a meteoric rise. One of the key drivers of this trend has been the innovative use of social media tools like WeChat by psychological service providers to both attract consumers and deliver products. This paper argues that online psychological service provision via WeChat constitutes a very literal “technology of the self” in the way that the content published explicitly tells consumers that a better, healthier and happier self is within reach. For a fee these companies help provide people with psychological toolkits that they use to shape their understanding of the ways they can heal themselves and others.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Digital society in China
- A shaky memory: the function of unreadable signs as Chinese online activism in the case of relaying The Whistle-Giver
- Sociotechnical imaginaries shaping China’s emerging social credit system
- Marketing controversies—Dolce & Gabbana’s China campaign Eating with Chopsticks
- Building the skill of happiness: WeChat’s role in the promotion of mental health in China
- Contemporary Chinese art on WeChat and its utilisation to promote artists and their artworks
- Artikel – Articles
- Zum Verhältnis zwischen dem chinesischen Modalverb yīnggāi und dem Tempus sowie dem Aspekt
- Rezensionen – Comptes Rendus – Book Reviews
- Der 1000 Zeichen Klassiker = [qian zi wen] 千字文 / aus dem Chinesischen übersetzt und kommentiert von Eva Lüdi Kong
- Willms, Jan: Die Grundprinzipien des Reichswesens – Eine annotierte Übersetzung und diskursgeschichtliche Einzelanalyse des Kokutai no hongi als Fragment des japanischen Nationaldiskurses nach 1937
- Woerner-Powell, Tom: Another Road to Damascus: An Integrative Approach to ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irī (1808–1883)
- Miscellaneous
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2021
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Digital society in China
- A shaky memory: the function of unreadable signs as Chinese online activism in the case of relaying The Whistle-Giver
- Sociotechnical imaginaries shaping China’s emerging social credit system
- Marketing controversies—Dolce & Gabbana’s China campaign Eating with Chopsticks
- Building the skill of happiness: WeChat’s role in the promotion of mental health in China
- Contemporary Chinese art on WeChat and its utilisation to promote artists and their artworks
- Artikel – Articles
- Zum Verhältnis zwischen dem chinesischen Modalverb yīnggāi und dem Tempus sowie dem Aspekt
- Rezensionen – Comptes Rendus – Book Reviews
- Der 1000 Zeichen Klassiker = [qian zi wen] 千字文 / aus dem Chinesischen übersetzt und kommentiert von Eva Lüdi Kong
- Willms, Jan: Die Grundprinzipien des Reichswesens – Eine annotierte Übersetzung und diskursgeschichtliche Einzelanalyse des Kokutai no hongi als Fragment des japanischen Nationaldiskurses nach 1937
- Woerner-Powell, Tom: Another Road to Damascus: An Integrative Approach to ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irī (1808–1883)
- Miscellaneous
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2021