A comparative analysis of public service announcements of senior citizens' COVID-19 vaccination in Singapore and Hong Kong

• Main Author: Zou, Yun
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Linguistics::Discourse analysis
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168458
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

To better combat the widespread COVID-19 pandemic, every country uses every means to encourage their citizens, especially seniors who are the most vulnerable, to receive the vaccination to better protect themselves and their families. Singapore and Hong Kong, both densely populated with serious aging problems, are no exception in trying their utmost to engage their senior citizens to accept COVID-19 vaccination. To achieve this goal, these two cities both put a lot of effort into publishing Public Service Announcements (PSAs) regarding vaccination to dispel seniors’ fear of side effects and encourage them to get vaccinated. Since Singapore and Hong Kong both have citizens of various races and their official languages both contain Chinese and English, the comparison between their PSAs is valuable. Three research questions are therefore raised: Are there any differences between Public Service Announcements concerning senior citizens’ vaccination in Singapore and Hong Kong? What are these differences? What cultural features are revealed? Following these three research questions, this dissertation compares 41 PSAs regarding senior citizens’ vaccination in Singapore and Hong Kong from textual and visual perspectives, utilizing Systemic Functional Grammar and Visual Grammar. After analyzing the similarities and differences between the selected PSAs, cultural features revealed from these differences in Singapore and Hong Kong are further explored. With globalization and aging marked as two vital features of the current society, the conclusions drawn are useful for countries that seek to protect the increasing number of vulnerable seniors when facing an unprecedented crisis and maintain social harmony among diverse cultures and races at the same time.