• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.77
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• pp.73-107
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• 2016

The general programming channels, newly introduced around the beginning of the 2010s, have grown into powerful journalistic agencies, the far-reaching social influences of which are not confined by the economic effects within the South Korean media industry. They are now rendered to become part of major socio-political institutions that try to secure their privileges based on broadcast journalism, and to widen their business opportunities through those special kind of social practices. This research has taken a path of theoretical endeavour to devise a conceptual framework that will effectively lead to a series of academic investigation into the socio-political characteristics of general programming channels. To this end, specific attention is paid to such theoretical and conceptual resources as the instrumentalization of media by the politics, the political sociology of media power, media-political parallelism, and the structural coupling between the political and the media systems. This paper suggests that general programming channels have emerged as a new interface that accommodates and actualizes the structural coupling between the two societal subsystems, and in the course of that, they undercut the vulnerable basis of media public sphere, effectively replacing it with entertaining media-political sphere constructed and managed by themselves. This sphere is where the media system's logic and the poltical system's logic are intertwined, simutaneously accelerating not only the mediatization of the politics but also the politicization of the media.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.77
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• pp.36-72
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• 2016

Comprehensive Cable TV Channels(CCCs) has been established as a political product around 5 years ago, and it's influence and position on the broadcasting field are keep increasing. CCC's stabilization is based on flooding the market with journalism. The repeating news and current affairs programs are appearing constantly in the afternoon which is CCC's primetime. The current affairs talk shows are a product of CCC's representative program type and it leads unique CCC style journalism. The guests of the current affairs talk show leading the program with critiques(comments) and discussions about political issues. The purpose of this study is to explore how these guests of the current affairs talk shows conceptually positioned as political mediating elites and same time to explore the television political landscape through the representative current affairs talk shows from TV chosun, Channel A, MBN, JTBC which are present by these political elites. This study wants to find out about that television political effects from CCCs which exemplified into certain directions by these political mediating elites saying their political biases and expresses their feelings drastically that causes high ratings and brings people's attention. The guests who called political mediating elites in this study are mostly considered to be extreme rightist, conservatives, conservative-centrist and they have close relationship with certain political party or political group. The political mediating elites gain the popularities and have great influence on the public from performing the television politics through CCCs' current affairs talk shows and use that to make political exchange connections with political groups. Therefore this study wants to point out that CCCs' current affairs talk shows are situated in political rally, exchange connection, so current affairs talk shows are existing only for political battle field.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.77
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• pp.9-35
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• 2016

This research focuses on how political talk shows by Channel A and TV Chosun provoke strong, negative emotions, such as anger or loathing, towards certain parties, politicians and groups only, and tries to explain what's the relation to Korean democracy crisis under the circumstances. Those talk shows by Channel A and TV Chosun, predominantly about anger and loathing towards oppositions, opposition politicians and pro-North Korea people, have contributed to practical exclusion of the citizens from the political process by their imaginary political participation rather than a role as a democratic public sphere, so they have functioned very well in order to sustain the system of Korean democracy as a way of 'the politics of exclusion', and have been retained regardless of their commercial success for the reason. In other words, the Korean democracy has systematically excluded every citizen and amplified ideological conflicts, and in that chaos of excessively produced emotions, has dealt with all the crucial matters using political technology, which is a serious problem. However, for the good of the political power who wants to keep such kind of political system, this became a reason why those Channel A and TV Chosun shows-sensational and politically biased-have survived, and since Channel A and TV Chosun are remarkably functional within the continuance of that political system they can keep being influential in politics.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.48
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• pp.109-134
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• 2009

This study explores the political parody, which has become an active art form in order to express Korean Internet users' political practices, especially, during the politically turbulent periods from the presidential election of 2003 to the recent candlelight vigil protest of 2008. This study investigates the rise and fall of a parody culture by online users from the mid-2000s, and also examines aesthetical aspects of parodic artworks relying on amateurism culminated in 2004. Specifically, the current study questions an aesthetical lack shown in 'appropriation', by which most of the online users simply produce imitations of original image. This study rather notes 'photomontage' as an aesthetic prototype, the political aesthetics made by John Heartfield, through which this study intends to observe how his aesthetical legacy of political art could be realized in the contemporary form of political parodies produced by online users. The present paper concludes that online users' political participations in producing critical works of art could allow us to negate the dichotomy between the elite and the mass, professional artists and amateur parodists, and a radical politics and the politics of style.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.63
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• pp.5-25
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• 2013

Korean society suffers from severe divisions represented by bi-polarization and collapse of the middle class. Intensive demanding on expanding social welfare budget has emerged in accordance with such a dramatic shift. Social consensus moving toward well-financed welfare policy, however, happens to meet political opposition supported by the discourse of fiscal soundness. This paper thus pays particular attention to deciphering the discursive structure in way of understanding how discourses bring public policy into play. For this purpose, news articles about fiscal soundness collected from 8 national newspapers have been analyzed in terms of frame, attitude, perspective and world view. Research results show, first of all, that there exist persistent competition between two frames identified as 'reduced tax with fiscal discipline' and 'increased tax with welfare money.' While the 'reduced tax' frame favors in maintaining tax cut at the expense of welfare budjet, the frame of 'increased tax' supports such arguments as the flexible employment of fiscal soundness and prosperity of national community helped by widening tax revenues. Also did these frames include a number of sub-frames like welfare populism, partisan politics, trickle down effect, tax bonanza for the rich, universal welfare and market over-reactions in order to bolster its logical authority. Media's active taking a part in penetrating supportive frames in line with political stance was found as well. Taking into account both the discursive structure upheld by frames and politics materialized by the media, the authors argue that public policies should be considered more as discourse than fixed reality. Shedding additional light on understanding the interplay among public opinion, policies and media discourse is of another importance for further study.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2011

The power of the internet community as a social network exerts great influence on all areas of our society not only on knowledge creation and knowledge sharing but also on politics, economy, and culture. This study aims to investigate how the diffusion process of information evolves on the internet in the new environment. The focus of the study is particularly on aspects of using information and the process of information production and the types and methods of online communities. It is the goal of the study to clarify aspects of the online community as an important mediator among universal means of communication in our society. Ways of social communication are changing rapidly and thus the reasoning for this change is very important policy issues to form a social consensus.

• Journal of Public Diplomacy
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.5-35
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• 2021

Where government communication in the early 20^th century fell under the umbrella term, "propaganda," the post-WWII era saw a paradigm fracture into public affairs for domestic audiences, public diplomacy for foreign audiences, and psychological operations for hostile audiences. The continued diffusion of the Internet, however, has blurred such distinctions, mending this fractured paradigm. Based on in-depth interviews, this study typologizes government communication to contextualize how various tactics functions within the 21^st century digital media ecology, through an "Information Intervention" taxonomy. In an age where state-sponsored disinformation and computational propaganda are tantamount threats, this paper elucidates the field's fundamental concepts by articulating who communicates with what audience, in what manner, with what intent, and with what desired outcomes.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.51
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• pp.136-155
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• 2010

Media diversity, coupled with the logic of competition in the global media market, has become a fashionable yet unfitting lingo of media policy in Korea. Media diversity has been fenced in the neoliberal economic logic of market competition and so tamed to consumers' free choice in the market. It is within this context that this article attempts to problematize narrowly-defined, market-oriented, and measurement-obssessed funtionalistic approaches to media diversity. In doing so, the article provides a critical overview of various definitions of media diversity. It also reveals how certain definitions, justifications, and measurements are legitimized and normalized in the name of science and objectivity. The core argument is that reflecting a larger neoliberal, deregulatory turn in media policy, media diversity has shifted from the pluralistic principle of democracy to the matter of free market choice or the myth thereof. It then focuses on the ongoing debate between state interventionists and free market liberals over the relationship between media ownership concentration and content diversity. Finally, it puts forth some recommendations as to how media diversity ought to be reconsidered as reformers' cultural politics, rather than marketeers' science, and discusses implications diversity has for deepening Korean democracy.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.18
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• pp.7-36
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• 2002

This study is concerned with analysing complexity, flexibility and dynamism of social discoursive space. The developmental process of social discourse is analogous to that of a spatial structure of social discourse. Post-capitalist society has seen New-Liberalism and New-Conservatism have become dominant, resulting in the deterioration of the cultural politics of citizenship. It is argued that the position of otherness, in which those binary structures (inside/outside or centre/margin) collide and collapse, is where subversive discourse can emerge to dominant discursive power. Furthermore, it is necessary to democratize social discursive space, through which the Other becomes able to. participate in the social production, distribution and consumption of social discourse.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.3-19
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• 2013

Studies on the SNS political participation have covered issues of SNS effect on political participation, electoral campaigns, and the public sphere. Such issues as characteristics of SNS political participation, the characteristics of SNS users, SNS effect on the political participation, active SNS political participants, and the impact on young people's political participation, etc. have been studied in the area of political participation effect. On the election issues, SNS impact on election turnout, voting behavior, and the election results were main research topics. Finally, the research on the public sphere mainly discussed topics of quality of SNS information and social fragmentation phenomenon. What is commonly observed across all the three subjects is that the conflicting claims appear to almost all the topics. These contradictory findings are likely to occur because variables of real politics are not fully taken into account and research variables are not strictly manipulated. We can get more accurate research results in the study of SNS political participation when we conduct cross-national research reflecting the context of real politics and also designing independent variables more in detail and elaborately.