Progress Report 1

Date: 05/29/2008
To: Dr. Holmevik
From: Jin Liu

Introduction
I'm writing a proposal for my master's thesis. The thesis is about visual literacy in the context of cross-cultural communication. It will summarize the correlations between Asian cultural characteristics and image reading habits by studying the utilization of long shots, writer-centered scenes and family themes in Asian commercial reward winners, which will lead to a series recommendations of advertising in Asian market comparing with American market.

Work Completed
By now, though I only finished a small part of literature review, I'm eager to read more about visual literacy of Asian audience due to their cultural characteristics, such as high-context culture, high power distance culture and collective culture, and so on. Additionally, I got Drs. Fishman, Holmevik and Sample to organize my thesis committee.

Next Steps
I think I need to do more literature review on the methodology of TV commercial research, the correlation between Asian cultural characteristics and image reading habits, and to specify the commercials as research subjects.

Conclusion
I'm glad I finally found a point between visual literacy and intercultural communication to begin my research, which has been my interest for a long time. In addition I will be able to utilize my experience in video editing as well. I started feeling excited about the research.