A Study On The Effect Of Communication Between Heterogenous Cultures

International communication has been widely used as an instructive definition in building a country’s image; in this manner, we must realise that it should discontinue the use of propaganda in international communication. However, we still face the challenge of how to communicate effectively between different cultures. Heterogenous Culture is a topic in cultural anthropology which compares the unique qualities possessed by different cultures, especially cultures of very different origins. Chinese culture and Western European culture are typical heterogenous cultures which belong to completely separate cultural systems; that is why when these two cultures meet, the possibility of misunderstandings are numerous and often result in miscommunication. Australia is a country dominated by Western European culture; this means that researching Australian society’s understanding of Chinese culture is of great significance in understanding how heterogenous cultures can communicate with each other effectively.In this thesis, I will analyse Australia’s top three newspapers in order to explore China’s image in Australian local newspapers. This study shows that in comparison with other Western countries, Australian newspapers don’t show much interest in China or Chinese society. However, local newspapers show a keen interest in Chinese economics, as there are many published articles relating to this field. Finally, the newspapers analysed do not show any particular like or dislike of China except for obvious negative attitudes showed when the two governments experienced diplomatic issues.From the perspective of public communication, the reason for the problems outlined above is chiefly due to the different structures of heterogenous cultures, leading to differing perspectives in each society’s outlook of the cultural other. Furthermore, there is a sense of despair whilst analysing communication between heterogenous cultures arising from the fact that the intrinsic qualities that make different cultures ’different’ is something that we can never change. Despite this we can still try to find methods according to public communication theory to improve cross-cultural communication.