A Comparison Between Online Domestic And Overseas Audience's Uses And Gratifications Of Chinese TV Dramas In The Context Of New Media

In the era of new media,the development of Internet provides more approaches and channels for audience to realize their subjectivity.People can choose any media as they like and share their comments on a certain TV drama in public communities,which in return promotes its transmission.Therefore,in order to enhance China's intercultural communication competence,it is important to understand overseas and domestic audience's needs and gratifications of Chinese TV dramas.In the previous studies of TV dramas,many scholars carried out researches either from the perspective of overseas TV dramas,or from the intercultural communication competence,communication strategies and content of domestic TV dramas while relatively few studies were done from the perspective of domestic and overseas audience's psychology.This paper,based on Uses and Gratifications Theory,analyzes the intercultural communication of Chinese TV dramas in the context of new media from the perspective of audience.It takes the 2015 hit domestic TV drama Nirvana in Fire as an example,and uses content analysis as the research method to analyze hundreds of comments given by overseas audience on Viki,MyDramalist and IMDb,and domestic audience on Douban.By comparing the similarities and differences of these comments,this thesis aims to explore their needs and gratifications of Nirvana in Fire so as to reveal their true motivations to watch Chinese TV drama.The study finds out that overseas and domestic audience share some similarities in needs,such as aesthetic needs and entertainment needs while differences exist as well.On one hand,as a historical TV drama,Nirvana in Fire greatly satisfies domestic viewers' psychology of nostalgia and cultural identity.What's more,fans of the original novel as well as fans of the leading stars in this drama have a stronger sense of belonging and gratifications.However,due to the homogeneity of domestic TV dramas,they show little interest in its plot,theme,etc..Overseas audience,on the other hand,are more likely to have entertainment and curiosity needs met when watching this drama.They have a great interest in unique Chinese elements such as costumes,etiquette and scenery.However,in the past decades,overseas audience have formed a negativestereotype of Chinese TV dramas for their low production quality and poor acting,and therefore have long been discouraged from watching them.What's worse,the lacking of subtitles and the differences of cultural background disable them to understand Chinese TV dramas.Nirvana in Fire,with a high-quality production and excellent subtitle,greatly meets overseas audience's curiosity needs.The audience also obtain great aesthetic and entertainment gratifications from the skilled,good-looking Chinese stars in this drama.The thesis also tries to provide reasons for the similarities and differences of needs and gratifications from the perspective of intercultural communication,such as language boundary,cultural differences and affective identification and so on.Based on the results of analysis,this paper proposes some feasible suggestions for future intercultural communication of Chinese TV dramas,such as equipping to-be-exported Chinese TV dramas with multilingual subtitles and background introduction so as to help overseas audience to understand these dramas;Holding cultural activities such as Chinese TV culture festivals at home and abroad so as to interact with foreign audience closely while meeting their cognitive and aesthetic needs;taking full advantage of “Internet+idol” effect,such as encouraging Chinese stars to update records of daily life on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter so as to strengthen the interaction with their overseas fans and mobilize their enthusiasm for Chinese TV dramas;and making full use of new media by strengthening the cooperation with overseas video websites such as Viki,Mydramalist and Netflix so as to provide more choices of platforms for overseas audience.Approaches like putting up posts of Chinese TV dramas on the homepage of these websites will help to seize more viewers' attention.The conclusion summarizes the views of the paper,and points out the shortcomings of this paper such as the limitation of research object,the small size of samples and the overlap of the category standards.