Italian atheists have lost their bid to run "No God" advertisement in Italian citiesafter strong opposition from conservation political parties, Reuters January 19, 2009.
However, city buses in London, Washington and Barcelona were successful in running the advertisement on city buses.
This ad brings up the issue of cultural perspective of communication. Why is this ad allowed in some countries and banned in others?
From the social constructionist perspective communication is shaped by the community.
If a particular community and government as a whole gives limited rights to freedom of speech, there will be many codes imposed on what is allowed and restricted to be aired.
Any violation of the code will cause ideas or information to be censored off.
Compare this to a community which embraced the freedom of speech and is very tolerant and allow whatever information to be aired publicly, will have much lesser codes of restriction imposed.
Like in this case, Italians, Americans, English, Spanish, all of which are Christian majority nation. But why is it
the Italians are the only one who banned this ad?
It maybe because Christianity in Italy is more sacred than it is in other nations since, the Vatican is there and the pope lives there. Such an ad will be an outright challenge to the Pope and the whole roman catholic community which the Italian government cannot afford to do so. Political reasons have limited freedom of
speech there.
Thus, it is important to know the culture and tradition of a place you are running your ad.
If not it will be a big waste on advertisng fees and human labour.
