The Impact Of American Mass Culture On Chinese Undergraduates

Jeans, typical of American mass culture, are believed to be loaded with lots of American cultural values which are transmitted along with jeans around the globe and intended to influence other national cultures. The present study, through investigating the popularity of jeans among Chinese undergraduates, aims to explore to what extent the American mass culture is consumed by Chinese undergraduates and whether such a culture Americanizes those students.Two hypotheses were at first proposed, which were later testified comprehensively through reviewing literature, constructing theoretical framework and conducting survey with questionnaires.The author reviewed relevant studies done by scholars here and abroad on the issue of the global transmission of American mass culture and the immediate influence and declared her stand. Then she constructed a tentative framework for this study by synthesizing perspectives from intercultural communication, mass media communication and psychology to illustrate the specific processes during the transmission of American mass cultural products.Data were collected mainly through questionnaires from two universities of Hu Nan province. 150 respondents were from three different grades, twelve different departments and twenty-four different provinces all over China. Results further supported the two hypotheses. And the results also showed that sometimes specific variables in social situation such as age and psychological characteristics would be more influential than values in communication.In sum, the results suggest that American mass culture mainly influences the superficial level of Chinese culture and that Chinese people tend to accept foreign culture actively, creatively and critically. Therefore, we should be confident in Chinese culture and should not refuse foreign cultural products. To the contrary, we should actively make use of those products to meet our daily needs and at the same time selectively borrow from them to promote and enhance Chinese culture.