• 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.