My Love from the Star, the hit Korean drama has led to the revival of the Hallyu boom in China in 2013. After conducting a textual analysis of 100 reviews on Douban, the results of this study indicate that urban middle class audiences in China are attracted by the beauty of the actors and the conservative romantic storyline, and admire individual pursuits of free love and career success depicted in the drama. However, they are dissatisfied with the stereotypical gender relations and criticize the drama’s aim of securing the submission of women to male domination. The results illustrate that cultural proximity is not only related to the audiences’ cultural background, but also determined by the social class and lived experiences. As the major consumers of Hallyu 2.0 have switched to the open-minded young generation, the production of Korean dramas which maintains the traditional patriarchal ideologies is facing challenges ahead.

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This study examines the audiences’ discussions on the local adaptations of The Voice of China and The Voice of Germany through a content analysis of 128 microblogging posts. Specifically, this research explores the content, language and tone of the sampled posts on Sina Weibo and Twitter, respectively. The study found that while German audiences take notice of various topics relating to the show, Chinese audiences mainly focus on talents. The Chinese audiences have also paid attention to the talents’ age in accordance with their respect to the elderly in the society. Compared to the German audiences, the Chinese audiences post in their mother tongue exclusively and they are more critical. The findings suggest marked differences of the audiences’ responses to the shows on microblogging websites in different national contexts, but also partly challenge the traditional cultural values proposed by Hall and Hofstede based on researches of offline behaviors.

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