CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ONLINE AUDIENCES’ RESPONSES TO A DIABETES FOOT ULCER PREVENTION CAMPAIGN: IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN CAPITAL IN AGRARIAN/DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
Publication Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2026
Author(s): ONOJA, Ibe Ben; ONOJA, Nelson Monday; OKAIYETO, Simon Ayodele; ONOJA, Patience Ojonile; ONOJA, Ojone Gift; and AGARA, Daniel Nnanna
Journal Name: (IJAEMD)
ABSTRACT
This study examines how online audiences interpret and negotiate health messages through a Critical Discourse Analysis of audience responses to a diabetes foot ulcer prevention campaign shared on a Facebook wall. Guided by Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach to CDA, the study investigates the dominant discourse reflected in the comments; explores how online audiences construct and negotiate medical advice; and analyzes the linguistic, discursive, intertextual and intersubjective strategies embedded in their comments. The study adopted a qualitative research design and collected data from purposively selected Facebook comments posted in response to a diabetes foot ulcer prevention video. The data were analyzed using thematic and discourse-analytic procedures informed by DHA principles. The study found a heavy use of discourses such as humour, advocacy, information-seeking, and experiential narratives in the comments. The study also shows that the audience negotiated the medical advice on diabetes foot ulcer prevention by affirming the message, drawing on their own and their relatives’ experiences, accepting the advice conditionally, contesting it, and collaboratively clarifying it. The commenters employed linguistic features such as rhetorical questions, code-switching, and exaggeration vis-à-vis intertextual and intersubjective interaction to turn the Facebook comment section into a community for the construction of health knowledge. The study therefore concludes that the online audience’s active involvement in enacting, rejecting, renegotiating and reconstructing medical advice and risk points to successful utilization of Facebook for health communication and recommends increased utilization of Facebook for the dissemination of medical health risks and warnings.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Diabetes Foot Ulcer Prevention Campaign; Online Audiences; Human capital; Agrarian/Developing economies