Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

This qualitative study investigates how the multicultural family is represented and how multiculturalism is practiced in the Korean media. In order to identify the government’s assumptions regarding multiculturalism, this study investigates two cases of government-sponsored Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) about multiculturalism. Since PSAs are mainly designed to deliver and educate a certain message to the general public for the purpose of changing public opinion and raising awareness of social issues, they are a form of informal curricular texts. Because PSAs are composed of meaningful themes, symbols, images, narrations, and subtitles in a highly concise manner, analyzing PSAs with qualitative text analysis is ideal for verifying and demonstrating the rigor of qualitative study. Critical multiculturalist lenses are used in the analytical process, with careful attention paid to every detailed element of the two advertisements throughout the processes. Analysis of each case is divided into two parts: description of the advertisement and text analysis. Precise descriptions of the advertisement are provided explicitly so that readers may check the validity of the critical analysis. In doing so, this study transparently provides the processes and results of analysis with detailed critiques of PSAs. The study concludes with implications for current practices and discusses future directions for improving PSA practice.