Abstract
The mass media in the form of advertising is extensively employed in the process of nation-building in Malaysia. Advertising has been used as an important tool for educating the public about State issues, ensuring diverse cultures are equally represented and the multicultural values are emphasized to the fullest. The objective of the present study is to investigate how outdoor advertising, particularly billboards, promotes the language, social identity, and multicultural values of Malaysian society for nation-building. In Malaysia, the extensive use of advertisements has been argued as one of the most powerful mechanisms to enhance Malaysian identity, foster interactions and thus contribute to the process of nation-building even though it is portrayed in a banal and routine way. To achieve its objective, this paper utilizes semiotic methodology to examine 11 billboards to understand the relationships between texts and visuals that communicate messages to the public. The findings revealed that the billboards do not only communicate pro-social messages, but also reflect the language, social identity and multicultural values of Malaysian society towards nation-building. This study expands the work of outdoor advertising within the Malaysian society and contributes to Semiotic Analysis by examining textual-visual elements of billboards.
Highlights
The use of mass media such as the Internet, television, radio, and newspapers can be a powerful tool for communicating information about products and services, and pro-social messages (Embong et al 2016)
Apart from analyzing the representation of semiotic modes, this paper explores how banal nationalism operates through language and national symbols to promote nation-building to people of different ethnic groups
The last theme examines the good values that are attached to the people or the norm of an ethnic group that symbolizes the idea of multicultural Malaysian society
Summary
The use of mass media such as the Internet, television, radio, and newspapers can be a powerful tool for communicating information about products and services, and pro-social messages (Embong et al 2016). Billboards, posters, and banners which are referred to as outdoor advertising (Gardner et al 2000) are used to achieve similar purposes. The principal characteristic of outdoor advertising is ‘display advertising’ in the way that it can be seen and read at some distance within a few seconds to capture readers’ attention (Weir 1993). Gardner et al (2000) suggest that ‘display advertising’ requires some qualities: simplicity, readability and believability in the selection of words and images to produce a convincing message. Despite the rise of interactive digital advertising that exerts profound influences on targeted audiences (Chu and Kim 2018), outdoor billboard advertising remains an effective channel for reaching its messages to the public (Daljit 2018). The use of outdoor advertising has the potential to influence mass audience with greater exposure and repeated message viewing (Herrera and Pasch 2018)
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