An Analysis Of Chinese And American Television Public Service Announcements From The Perspective Of Cultural Values

As one of the types of advertising, Public Service Announcements (PSAs) have inherent and close relationships with one country's cultural values. In the researches of intercultural communication, scholars always attach much importance to cultural values studies.Nonetheless, few scholars are involved in the research of cultural values on Public Service Announcements in the intercultural communication study. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the cultural values reflected in the Chinese and American television Public Service Announcements. To begin with, three research questions are put forward, then on the basis of Hofstede's and Hall's cultural value dimensions and the analysis categories revised according to Cho et al., content analysis is conducted on 131 Chinese samples and 135 American samples from 2001 to 2012. The findings reveal that the Chinese television PSA samples manifest the following cultural values more frequently than do the American samples:Collectivism value dimension, Long-Term Orientation value dimension and High Context value dimension. On the other hand, American television PSA samples utilize the following cultural values more often than do the Chinese samples: Individualism value dimension,Short-Term Orientation value dimension and Low Context value dimension. Moreover, three cultural value dimension — Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance and Masculinity/Femininity—do not appear frequently and the frequency of them are not significantly differentiated in either of the two countries' samples. These changes reflect that in the specific context of PSAs, the cultural values embodied vary from that in social life.This phenomenon also manifests the culture changes in both countries under many influences and matches the argument "culture is dynamic".