• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.379-392
• /
• 2019

Public service advertising is a form of communication activity performed to increase public interest. In order to improve the effectiveness of public service advertising, it is necessary to formulate advertising strategies that can actually induce positive action changes. China has various social problems because of dramatic social changes, which call for implementing public service advertising. This study aims to improve the persuasive effects of Chinese public service advertising by addressing effective communication strategies. In particular, we selected 33 works that use fear appeals from 2016 HuangHe Award-winning posters and analyzed their visual representation of fear appeals. The results suggest that fear appeals are frequently used in safe driving and anti-smoking campaigns. In addition, main colors of these posters were black and white. The main fearful images were often represented in a form of 'fact' and 'factual conception' and in the type of 'picture.' They also have features of implicit association' and 'exaggeration'. This study has a significance in terms of providing theoretical and empirical information to future research on improvement of public service advertising in China.