• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.49
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• pp.53-85
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• 2017

This study deals with the production system of the superhero animation that are based on DC comic books and are produced by Warner Brothers company, and tries to find out ways in order to vitalize the new window of the animation market. 28 superhero animations released from 2007 until 2017 are analyzed. Several critical points are drawn out and can be applied to the Korean animation industry. There are two categories, one is about the management of the production system, and the other is about the subcontract system. In managing the production system, there are three points: First, there are several people who play the role of either a producer or a director many times. Second, producers used to work as a group. Third, some people work not only as a producer but also as a director. In carrying out outsourcing contracts, there are six points: First, only Korean and Japanese companies participate as subcontract companies. Second, about two companies used to take part in the subcontract production in a year. Third, in case of number of people involved in production, there are more Japanese than Korean. Fourth, Japanese companies deal with some parts of the pre-production as well as the main production in . Fifth, a Japanese company has a sub-subcontract with a Korean company in one episode of . Sixth, Korean companies mostly focus on the production part of key animation. Important points that the Korean production system has to consider are also suggested under the two categories. In the production system management, there are two points. It is needed to make use of the group producer system, and it is critical to develop the story line of universe type such as DC Universe. In case of the outsourcing production system, it is essential to keep up educating 2D type of animation and, at the same time, to participate actively in the global outsourcing production. By considering these crucial points, it is expected to keep producing animation that can be used for the media window such as IPTV.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.