“Money can buy health”

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on the notion of affect, this paper offers a multimodal critical discourse analysis of health-related product advertising in Hong Kong during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertisements were collected in the city’s space of commute. We examine the construal of risk and protection in the advertisements and via their emplacement in three spatial-temporal dimensions observed in the data: the market society, the concrete public space, and the intimate familial space. Our analysis demonstrates that while risk and protection are linguistically and visually depicted to varying degrees across these dimensions, the emplacement of advertisements prompts the viewers to regard their immediate space as full of risks. As individuals encounter the advertisements, they become interpellated to see the purchase of the advertised products as necessary. Illuminating health communication during the pandemic, this study contributes to health commercialisation and responsibilisation research and provides insights into the ideological, interpersonal nature of affect.