A Comparative Study On Group Privacy Awareness In Chinese Culture

With the prosperity of multiculturalism,intercultural communication has become the norm in people’s lives.As an objective cultural phenomenon,privacy plays an important role in intercultural communication.By reviewing the researches on the concept of privacy,people can find that there are more studies on the phenomenon of privacy culture abroad than at home,and the theoretical researches on privacy have lagged behind those on the practice.In this context,this study focuses on the phenomenon of privacy culture.Based on China’s national conditions,the study makes a comparative study of privacy awareness,trying to find out the current situation of Chinese people’s privacy awareness,and explore its underlying reasons.It is hoped that the study can provide some data reference and analysis basis for intercultural communication activities in the context of multi-cultural background.Based on the main research fruits of Altman,Westin and He Daokuan on privacy,and guided by Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory,the paper makes a comparative analysis of the privacy awareness of 4 samples,and analyzes underlying reasons in different aspects.Questionnaire research is used as the main method and interview as the supplementary method.The questionnaire is designed according to the definition and classification of privacy by Wang Liming and other scholars.Data are collected from the aspect of personal information,personal territory and personal activities.The questionnaire is in the form of Likert and the data is exported by adopting SPSS software.A total of 200 people answered valid copies.They are divided into 100 people aged 18-30 and over 40,respectively.Based on the questionnaire survey,the author conducted 8in-depth interviews with 4 male and 4 female of different ages and education backgrounds.The results confirm the hypothesis that there are differences in privacy awareness among different groups,and these differences are closely related to their cultural characteristics.The study found that as the cultural exchanges increases and the education level improves,the privacy awareness of different groups is not the same.As to personal information and personal territory,young people with growing individualism havestronger privacy awareness,while those over 40 years of age who are mainly collectivism care more about personal activities.Influenced by masculinity,the female are more aware of privacy.They are more concerned about personal information and personal territory,while the male are more concerned about personal activities.Higher educated people with high degree of uncertainty avoidance have stronger privacy awareness in personal information and personal field,but in personal activities,privacy awareness and education background are not necessarily related.Married people have stronger privacy awareness in personal information and activities,while the unmarried pay more attention to privacy in the personal territory.The analysis shows that the main reason is that the influence of internal groups is different.In order to keep harmonious interpersonal relationships,people often keep silence or change topics to regulate privacy.In addition,due to the strengthening of legal awareness,once privacy is violated,some people tend to resort to the law to protect their interests.