• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.67-104
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• 2020

Fake news and disinformation provoked heated arguments during Taiwan's 2018 local election. Most significantly, concerns grew that Beijing was attempting to sway the island's politics armed with a new "Russian-style influence campaign" weapon (Horton, 2018). To investigate the speculated effects of the "onslaught of misinformation," an online survey with 1068 randomly selected voters was conducted immediately after the election. Findings confirmed that false news affected Taiwanese voters' judgment of the news and their voting decisions. More than 50% of the voters cast their votes without knowing the correct campaign news. In particular, politically neutral voters, who were the least able to discern fake news, tended to vote for the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) candidates. Demographic analysis further revealed that female voters tended to be more likely to believe fake news during the election period compared to male voters. Younger or lower-income voters had the lowest levels of discernment of fake news. Further analyses and the implications of these findings for international societies are deliberated in the conclusion.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.39-66
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• 2018

This paper analyzes the structures and issues of 2018 Korean local elections based on the author's observations on the electoral processes. Even if this paper does not follow a traditional statistical method, it provides the interpretative meanings of 2018 local elections by utilizing an expert's observations of campaign processes. This result of 2018 election can be summarized into two analytical frames. In terms of electoral competition structure, three key factors, such as presidential approval rating, party competition structure, ideological spectrum, tend to affect the winning of governing party. In the light of election issue, the inter-Korean summit, the Washington-Pyeongyang summit, Incheon deprecating remark were positive to the vote gains of governing party, but the negative campaign, the drucking scandal and the swing voters were found not to be significant. The local election in Korea tends to show dual meanings, a proxy war of national-level politics and a composition process of local government. This paper found that the 2018 election has dual meanings at the same time, in a sense that it is the punishment of the ex-governing party's wrongdoing and the power change of local government.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.825-833
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• 2018

We examined the relationship between the order of signs and the order of vote within parties in electing local district councilors during the 7th nationwide local election held on June 13th, 2018. We analyzed election data for respective cases that include two, three, four candidates within the same party. In most cases, the candidate with sign 'Ga' gained more than other candidates in the same party, showing a need for provisional measures. In addition, a difference in voting tendency was found between in-house voting and early outside voting when there were two candidates in the Democratic Party of Korea as well as for when there were two candidates in the Liberty Korea Party.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.23-55
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• 2019

Do international economic factors affect the result of gubernatorial elections? This research aims to explain the reasons that local elections are not influenced by international economic factors such as US-China trade dispute. Although previous studies show the mixed results about the relationship between economic factors and gubernatorial electoral outcome, this research argues at least three explanations can be identified. First, there is a perceived gap between the candidates and local voters on the effect of trade disputes. Local voters do not consider the trade dispute as immediate threats, and candidates only use the trade dispute for attacking rivals. Where the functional responsibilities are unclear among elected officials between federal and local government, voters tend to cast votes based on their party identification. In the case of trade policy, functional responsibility is murky between the president and governor; voters may not judge the governor incumbent or candidates on state economic condition.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.223-258
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• 2022

The 2018 local elections completely upended the composition of Busan's city council, with the council membership changing from being solidly and consistently conservative to being over 80% liberal. What explains this anomalous outcome? While existing literature suggests the outcome of the 2018 city council elections was the consequence of a combination of structural and strategic factors, such as the decline of regional voting, we argue that the individual-level evaluation of President Moon Jae-in is one of the primary factors driving this result. Although coattails effects are commonly considered in concurrent national legislative elections, the Presidentialized and nationalized politics of Korea makes it possible for Presidential elections to affect local elections as well. We assess our explanation through an analysis of repeated cross-sectional survey data collected just before the 2018 local elections. The results of the analysis show that support for the Democratic Party is very strongly predicted by individual-level evaluation of President Moon. When considered in the context of the timing of presidential and local elections, the results suggest that Presidential coattail effects are capable of destabilizing established political patterns, such as regional voting, if perhaps only in a sporadic and idiosyncratic fashion, depending on whether or not local elections are held early on in a President's term.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.147-179
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• 2018

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta's Ex-Governor, lost his re-election bid in 2017 and then was jailed on a charge of blasphemy. After his defeat, the rhetorics of Indonesian politics was divided into two opposing sides: anti-Communism and 'pribumi' of the radical Islamic movements and Pancasila of the Jokowi administration. Although Islamic political parties are now preoccupied with their own coalitional politics and survivals, rather than solidarity of Islamic forces, the rising Islamic sentiments confirmed by the Jakarta election indicate that religion will continue to be a key variable in Indonesian politics. Meanwhile, ex-military generals who declared themselves as candidates in the 2018 regional election and the 2019 presidential election, as well as a few measures used by the Jokowi administration against extra-parliamentary political opponents, remind us of Suharto's New Order. Steady growth continues in economy. The raise of minimum wage enlarged middle classes and led to a decline of the poverty rate. Jokowi's commitment to building infrastructure has made tangible achievements. Under these circumstances, enhanced cooperation between Indonesia and South Korea is laudable, though any such cooperation must fully incorporate local sociocultural contexts, such as the strengthened halal certification system.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.79-106
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• 2019

Local governments within the boundaries of a state need increasing flexibility to satisfy diverse economic, social, and environmental goals in their particular geographical setting. However, many candidates in the local election in South Korea tend to see local politics as an extension of national-level politics. In particular, this paper mainly deals with how the voters' evaluation of a president's performance has influenced subnational elections in South Korea. Our analysis suggests that the fate of candidates in subnational elections is shaped by the performance of the incumbent president in both economic development and foreign affairs.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.301-316
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• 2020

Algorithm journalism refers to the practices of automated news generation using algorithms that generate human sounding narratives. Algorithm journalism is known to have strengths in automating repetitive tasks through rapid and accurate analysis of data, and has been actively used in news domains such as sports and finance. In this paper, we propose an interactive card news system that generates personalized local election articles in 2018. The system consists of modules that collects and analyzes election data, generates texts and images, and allows users to specify their interests in the local elections. When a user selects interested regions, election types, candidate names, and political parties, the system generates card news according to their interest. In the study, we examined how personalized card news are evaluated in comparison with text and card news articles by human journalists, and derived implications on the potential use of algorithm in reporting political events.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.149-171
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• 2018

The aim of this study is to investigate the library related campaign promises of the candidates for the heads of metropolitan governments and the superintendents of education between 1st and 6th nationwide local election in Korea. To do this, the library related campaign promises of 346 candidates were analyzed by analysing the official gazettes for elections digitally archived in National Election Commission of Korea. As a result, the campaign promises of the candidates were insufficient both in quality and quantity. The candidates for the heads of metropolitan governments showed low ratio of the library related campaign promises, excessive concentration on construction or installation of libraries and higher preference for small libraries than public libraries. The candidates for the superintendents of education showed relatively balanced distribution of the election promises on library fields. But the campaign promises related public libraries were insufficient and the campaign promises of school libraries did not reflect the major elements of school libraries and the context of school libraries in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.241-276
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• 2018

This article measures equal weighted voting to evaluate the fairness of a redistricting system operated in the $4^{th}$ to the $6^{th}$ metropolitan council elections using a new index. The cosine square index using in the article would be useful on what we see the ratio of the equality of population among metropolitan regions and the fairness of the whole electoral system, along with its simple calculation. The results of the fairness of the $4^{th}$ to the $6^{th}$ metropolitan council elections calculated by the cosine square index are as follow: Because the $4^{th}$ metropolitan council election uniformly elects two members for each electoral district regardless of the size of the population, it has a low equality of population between districts. But as a result of the decision of the Constitutional Court in 2007, standard of population variation in electoral district has been strengthened to 4 : 1 from the $5^{th}$ metropolitan council election. It increases significantly equality of population between districts from the $5^{th}$ metropolitan council election. But in the elections from the $4^{th}$ to the $6^{th}$ metropolitan council elections, Rural electoral districts continuously show the lowest equality of population between districts. It also shows the growing disparity between urban and rural areas as well as between capital and non-capital. This paper emphasizes that electoral apportionment in local council elections should reflect regional diversity and community identity.