• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.157-166
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• 2012

At the recent 19th General Election, Korean papers waged a surrogate war for the parties they share ideology with. All the conventional practices remained the same - the horse race-like presentations, furthering of confrontations, disregarding policy issues, allocating larger space for commentaries and negative issues, and etc. On top of these, papers began to focus on generational conflicts and individuals at the center of widespread attention and controversies, as a new trend. Photo images are largely used in the commentaries and articles dealing with confrontational or controversial situations. Of course, while the visual images seem to reinforce the emotional appeal of the messages papers try to get across, the potential problems need be noticed that could rise when irrelevant images are used.