• Information Systems Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.141-163
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• 2011

The advancement of information technologies including the Internet has affected the way of social information processing as well as brought about the paradigm shift to the information society. Accordingly, it is very important to study the process of social information processing over the digital media through which social information is generated, distributed, and led to social consensus. In this study, we analyze the mechanism of social information processing, identify a process model of social consensus and institutionalization of the results, and finally propose a set of information processing characteristics on the internet media. We deploy the ethnographic approach to analyze the meaning of group behavior in the context of society to analyze two major events which happened in Korean society. The formation process of social consensus is found to consist of 5 steps: suggestion of social issues, selective reflection on public opinion, acceptance of the issues and diffusion, social consensus, and institutionalization and feedback. The key characteristics of information processing in the Internet is grouped into proactive response to an event, the changes in the role of opinion leader, the flexibility of proposal and analysis, greater scalability, relevance to consensus making, institutionalization and interaction. This study contributes to the literature by proposing a process model of social information processing which can be used as the basis for analyzing the social consensus making process from the social network perspective. In addition, this study suggests a new perspective where the utility of the Internet media can be understood from the social information processing so that other disciplines including politics, communications, and management can improve the decision making performance in utilizing the Internet media.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.49
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• pp.265-294
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• 2024

This study begins with a question about research methods in humanities. It is grounded in the humanities, focusing on the changes that have brought light and darkness to the humanities, and focusing on discourse regarding research methods that explore those changes. If the role of the humanities is to prevent the proverbial "gray rhino," unlike the sciences, and if the humanities have a role to play in moderating the uncontrollable development of the sciences, what kind of research methods should humanities pursue. Furthermore, what kind of research methods should be pursued in the humanities, in line with the development of the sciences and the changing environment? This study discusses research methods in the humanities as follows: first, in Section 2, I advocate for the collaboration between humanities and scientific methods, utilizing accumulated assets produced by humanities and continuously introducing scientific methods. Prediction of change is highly precise and far-reaching in engineering and the natural sciences. However, it is difficult to approach change in these fields in a macro or integrated manner. Because they are not precise, they are not welcome in disciplines that deal with the real world. This is primarily the responsibility of humanities. Where science focuses on precision, humanities focuses on questions of essence. This is because while the ends of change have varied throughout history, the nature of change has not varied that much. Section 3 then discusses the changing environment, proposals for changes to humanistic research methods, reviews and proposals inductive change research methods, and makes some suggestions for humanistic change research. The data produced by the field of humanities accumulated by humankind in the past is abundant and has a wide range of applications. In the future, we should not only actively accept the results of scientific advances but also actively seek systematic humanistic approaches and utilize them across disciplinary boundaries to find solutions at the intersection of scientific methods and humanistic assets.