Compatible Advertisement in Multi-Ethnicity Country

The cultural sensitivity is a significant factor consideration in the media publication of multi-ethnicity country such as Malaysia. Especially in this information technology’s era, the wrongly way to manage the cultural issues in publication will be overstated by the community through a variety of new media such as Facebook and Twitter – two of most popular microblogging, and widely spread boundless.

According to Yow (2011), this Ramadan ad is tries to appeal non-Muslim to have appropriate behavior during the Muslim fasting month, as the respect and understanding of the significance of Ramadan. However, this ad eventually failed to achieve the original purposes, and has intensely opposed by the minority community in Malaysia.

According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p. 41), individuals use a range of modes of representation in their meaning making process, and each mode has specific social valuation based on particular cultural knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and value. In my opinion, this ad has created offensive meaning to non-Muslim especially Chinese, as a ‘Chinese girl’ is applying for inappropriate behavior during the Ramadan in the advertisement. Thus, the main concept of this advertisement is failed to be translated by the community in their cultural context, which has caused the ad resisted by the community.

As supported by Schriver (1997, p. 362), document designers need to take into account for both technological issues for organizing and displaying documents, and also viewer’s standpoint in interaction with documents. Otherwise, solely concerns on technological issues without consideration of viewer’s experience might lead to negative consequences in the document design.

2011 Ramadan TV Ads in Malaysia

                                                         (Source: Youtube)

Furthermore, the emergence of new media especially through microblogging such as Facebook has lead this ad widely spread in a very short time by the community. As suggested by Splichal (2009, p. 392), the new interactive virtual spaces, the Internet, substantially increased the feasibility of citizens’ participation in public discourse beyond national boundaries. For this Ramadan ad, there are large amount of criticize messages are flooded with Facebook page, which derived from both domestic and abroad Malaysians. Nguyen (2009, p. 24) also suggested that one of most powerful feature of new media vehicles is it facilitates the community sharing.

Overall, it is clearly to see that such new form of media is driving an interactive communication in the ways of publication, in which the audience has substantial power towards the contents of publication (Naughton 2006, p. 7).

References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Chapter 1: The Semiotic Landscape: Language and Visual Communication, Reading Images, pp. 16-44.

Lee, P 2011, ‘8TV’s strange way of saying sorry’, Free Malaysia Today, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/08/03/8tvs-strange-way-of-saying-sorry/>.

Lee, P 2011, ‘Ramadan Ads: Of Armpits and Morality’, Free Malaysia Today, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/08/02/ramadan-ads-of-armpits-and-morality/>.

Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the Emerging Media Ecosystem’, University of Oxford, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

News: Malaysia TV Station Ramadan Ads Sparks Debate 2011, YouTube video, Public Service Announcements (PSA), 3 August, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke7p5rp-nbI>.

Nguyen, JD 2009, ‘New Media Evolution: Business and IP Issues for Today’s Evolving Media World’, The Computer and Internet Lawyer, vol. 26, no. 9, pp. 18-24, <http://download.wolterskluwerlb.com/p-1585-new-media-evolution-business-and-ip-issues-for-todays-evolving-media-world.aspx>.

Schriver, KA 1997, Chapter 6: The Interplay of Words and Pictures, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, pp. 361-441.

Splichal, S 2009, ‘'New' Media, 'Old' Theories: Does the (National) Public Melt into the Air of Global Governance?’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 391-405, viewed 6 November 2011, <http://web.ebscohost.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/ehost/detail?sid=9c2903ae-cc33-4a20-888e-f39ebeb1168e%40sessionmgr12&vid=4&hid=24>.

Yow, HC 2011, Media Prima Pills Out 'Racist' Ramadan Ads, The Malaysian Insider, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/print/malaysia/media-prima-pulls-out-racist-ramadan-ads/>.